i LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf ^-^JyJ:Z^ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. % 



THE GREAT BAPTIZER. 



Bible Hisxory of Baptism. 



/ 



SAMUEL J. BAIRD, D. D. 



"He shall baptize yon with the Holy Ghost and with fire."— Matt, hi, 17. 

"This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel: And it shall come 
to pass, in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all 
flesh."— Acts ii, 16, 17. 



PIIILADELPHTA: 
JAMES H. BAIRD, 

1882. 



-^ 



,^|■8 



W 



,^^ 



Copyright 
SAMUEL J. BAIRD, 

1882. 



The Libra l 
OF Congre: 




PREFACE 



n^OT only does the ordinance of baptism hold a 
-^ position of pre-eminent honor, as being the door 
of entrance to all the privileges of the visible church, 
but it has been distinguished with a place of paramount 
importance and conspicuity in the transactions of the 
two grandest occasions in the history of that church, — 
in sealing the covenant at Sinai, by which Israel be- 
came the church of God, and the grace of Pentecost, 
by which the doors of that church were thrown open 
to the world. Proportionally interesting and signifi- 
cant is the ordinance, in itself, as symbolizing the most 
lofty, attractive and precious conceptions of the gospel, 
and unfolding a history of the plan of God in pro- 
portions of unspeakable interest, grandeur and glory. 
And yet, heretofore, the discussion of the subject has 
been little more than a disputation, alike uninteresting, 
inconclusive and unprofitable, concerning the word 
baptizo. 

The present treatise is an attempt to lift the sub- 
ject out of the low rut in which it has thus traversed, 
and to render its investigation the means of enlighten- 
ing the minds and filling the hearts of God's people 
with those conceptions,, at once exalted and profound, 
and those high hopes and bright anticipations of the 
future which the ordinance was designed and so hap- 
pily fitted to induce and stimulate. 

Eighteen years ago, — in a catechetical treatise on 
"The Church of God, its Constitution and Order,'' 



4 PREFACE. 

from the press of the Presbyterian Board of Publica- 
tion, — the author enunciated the essential principles 
which are developed in this volume. In 1870, they 
were further illustrated in a tract on " The Bible 
History of Baptism/' which was issued by the Pres- 
byterian Committee of Publication, in Richmond, Va. 
The reception accorded to these treatises has encouraged 
me to undertake the more elaborate disquisitions of 
the present work. The questions are sometimes such 
as require a critical study of the inspired originals of 
the holy Scriptures; and occasional illustrations are 
drawn from classic and other kindred sources. It has 
been my study so to conduct these investigations that 
while they should not be unworthy the attention of 
scholars, they may be intelligible to readers who are 
conversant with no other than our common English 
tongue, the richest and noblest ever spoken by man. 

The circumstances and manner of the introduction 
of the rite of immersion into the post-apostolic church 
presented a rich and inviting field of further investi- 
gation. But the volume has already exceeded the 
intended limit; the Biblical question is in itself com- 
plete, and its authority is conclusive. To it, there- 
fore, the present inquiry is confined. 

The fruit of much and assiduous investigation and 
thoughtful study is now reverently dedicated to the 
glory of the baptizing office of the Lord Jesus. May 
he speedily arise and display it in new and transcend- 
ent energy; pouring upon his blood-bought church the 
Spirit of grace and consecration, of knowledge and 
aggressive zeal, of unity and power; baptizing the 
nations with his Spirit, and filling the world with the 
joy of his salvation and the light of his glory. 

Covington, Ky., Feb. 8, 1882. 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION, Page 15 



Book I. 

OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. 

Part I. 

BAPTISM A T SINAI. 

Section I. Baptism originated in the Old Testament. — It was fa- 
miliar to the Jews when Christ came. There were " divers 
baptisms" imposed at Sinai, Page 21 

Section II. No Immersions in the Old Testament. — None in the 
ritual. None in the figurative language, 23 

Section III. The Old Testament Sacraments. — 1. Sacrifice. 2. 
Circumcision, 3, The Passover. 4. Baptism, 24 

Section IV. The Baptism of Israel at Sinai. — Scene at the mount. 
The covenant proposed and accepted. A great revival. Bap- 
tism of the converts. The feast of the covenant, .... 25 

Section V. TJie Blood of Sprinkling. — It was a type of Christ's 
atonement, 30 

Section YI. The Living water. — A type of the Spirit. Living 
and salt water. The river of Eden. That of the Revelation 
and of the prophets. The Dead Sea. Rain and fountains. 
Their symbolic functions, 31 

Part II. 

TTFE VISIBLE CHURCH. 

Section VII. The Abrahamic Covenant. — It was the betrothal, — 
not the marriage. Its terms spiritual, everlasting, exclusive. 
The Seed Christ. It adumbrated the covenant of grace. No 
salvation but on its terms, 37 

Section VIII. The Sinai Covenant. — Its Conditions. — Moses* 
commission. 1. "If ye will obey." 2. "And keep my cov- 
enant," 42 

Section IX. The Sinai Covenant. — Its Promises. — 1. A peculiar 
treasure. 2. " All the earth is mine." 3. A priest kingdom. 
4. A holy nation. '5. Palestine, 45 



6 CONTENTS. 

Section X. The Visible Church E^tahlished. — The Church de- 
fined. Its name. Its fundamental law. Membership. Fam- 
ily and eldership. Ordinances of testimony. The relation of 
the ritual law, Page 49 

Section XI. The Terms of Membership. — Professed faith and 
obedience. The same to Israel and Gentiles. Separating 
the unworthy, 50 

Section XII. Circumcision and Baptism. — The former seai||^ 
the Abrahamic covenant. The latter alone sealed the eccle- 
siastical covenant of Sinai, 58 

Part III. 

ADMINISTERED BAPTlSiIS= SPRINKLINGS. 

Section XIII. Unclean Seven Days. — The meaning. Childbirth. 
Issues. Contact with the dead. Leprosy. Characterized by 

(1) inward corruption; (2) seven days continuance; (3) con- 
tagiousness ; (4) requiring sacrifice and sprinkling, ... 60 

Section XIV. — Baptism of a Healed Leper. — Seven sprinklings. 
The self-washings. Meaning of the rites, 06 

Section XV. Baptism of the Defiled by the Dead. — The ordi- 
nary seal of the covenant. The ashes. Manner of the 
baptism, 68 

Section XVI. Baptism from Issues. — The law seemingly incon- 
gruous. The water of nidda, 69 

Section XVII. Baptism of Proselytes. — Talmudie traditions. 
Question between the Schools of Shammai and Hillel. The 
Levitical mode exemplified in the daughters of Midian, 76 

Section XVIII. Baptism of Infants. — The principle of infant 
membership recognized. Evidence of the baptism of He- 
brew children. Example of the infant Jesus, 82 

Section XIX. Baptism of the Levites.— Sprinkled with " water 
of purifying," 85 

Section XX. These all ivere one Baptism. The rites were essen- 
tially the same. Slight differences explained, SO 

Section XXI. The Symbol of 7?am.— Descent from heaven. 
Life and fruitfulness imparted. Testimonies of the prophets. 
Carson's xioctrine, 88 

Section XXII. It meant, Life to the Dead.— Men dead by na- 
ture. The Spirit shed down gives life to soul and body. Je- 
sus at the grave of Lazarus, 92 

Section XXIII. The Gospel in this Baptism.— { 1 ) The red heifer. 

(2) Without the camp. (3) Blood sprinkled, and blood and 
water. (4) Seven times. (5) Seven days' defilement. (6) 
The ashes. (7) The water. (8) The- sprinkling. (9) The 



CONTENTS. 7 

third day and the seventh. (10) The self-washing. (11) Things 

defiled and sprinkled, Page 95 

Section XXIV. These were the " Divers Baptisms," — The argu- 
ment of Heb. ix, 8, 9. The sprinklings were the theme of 
Paul's argument. They were his " divers baptisms," . . 103 

Part IV. 

RITUAL SELF-WASIIINGS. 

Section XXV. Unclean until the Even. — From expiatory rites. 
From contact with the unclean. Self-washing, 108 

Section XXVI. Grades of Self-washing. — 1. The hands. 2. The 
hands and feet. 3. The clothes. 4. The clothes and flesh. 
5. Shaving the hair, Ill 

Section XXVII. Mode implied in the meaning. — The self- 
washings meant the active putting off of the sins of the 
flesh, 115 

Section XXVIII. llie words used to designate the Washings. — 
1. Shataph. 2. Kabas. 3. Riihatz, 116 

Section XXIX. Mode of Domestic Ablution. — By water poured 
on. The patriarchs. Mode in Egypt. In the wilderness. 
Story of Susanna. Purgation of a concealed murder. Wash- 
ing the feet at table, 119 

Section XXX. Facilities requisite. — The water drawn from 
wells by women. No vessels for immersion. The bath of 
Ulysses, 126 

Section XXXI. The Washings of the Priests. — Symbolism of the 
tabernacle. The laver. Priestly washings. The laver and 
river of Ezekiel. No immersions here, 128 

Section XXXII. Like these ivere the Self-ivashings of the People. — 
Designations and meaning the same. Immersion would have 
been without meaning, 134 

Section XXXIII. Purifyings of things. — One case of immer- 
sion. Minor defilements cleansed by this immersion and by 
washings. The major, by sprinkling, 136 

Part V. 

LATER TRACES OF THE SPRINKLED BAPTISMS. 

Section XXXIV. Old Testament Alhisions. — The rite every- 
where, from Moses to Zechariah, 139 

Section XXXV. Rabbinic Traditions. — One heifer from Mo- 
ses to Ezra. Eight thence to the end, 142 

Section XXXVI. Festival of the Outpouring of Water. — Feast 



8 CONTENTS. 

of tabernacles. The outpouring. The festivity. Its mean- 
ing, Page M3 

Section XXXVII. Hellenistic Greek. — Alexander's favor to 
the Jews. Alexandria. Hellenistic Greek. Its literature. 
Baptizo. Dr. Conant's definitions. Baptisma and baptis- 
moi, 151 

Section XXXVIII. Baptism of Naaman. Tabal=haptizo. — The 
law of leprosy. Office of Elijah and Elisha. Naaman was 
sprinkled seven times^ according to the law, ^ 157 

Section XXXIX. " Baptized from the Dead." — Ecclus. xxxi, 
30. The water of separation here called baptism. " Bap- 
tized for the dead."— 1 Cor. xv, 29, 1G9 

Section XL. Judith's Baptism. — Story of Judith. Her baptism. 
Mohammedan washing before prayer, 172 

Section XLI. The Water of Separation in Philo and Josephus. — 
Philo on the subject. Josephus' description, . ... . .175 

Section XLII. Imitations by the Greeks and Romans. — Diffusive 
influence of Israel. The stain of crime, and purgation for it, 
novelties in Greece. Purifying always by sprinkled water. 
Ovid and Virgil. The Greek mysteries, 178 

Section XLIII. Baptism in Egypt and among the Aztecs. — The 
libation vase of Osor-Ur. Aztec infant baptism, .... 189 

Section XLIV. Levitical Baptism in the Fathers. — TertuUian 
on the idolatrous imitations. Other fathers on the water of 
separation. They recognize it as baptism, 192 

Part VI. 

STATE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ARGUMENT. 

Section XLV. Points established by the foregoing Evidence. — 
Twenty-one points of evidence enumerated, 196 



Book II. 

NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 



PartVIL 

JNTROnUCTOBY. 

Section XLVI. State of the Question. — 1. Baptism by sprink- 
ling, — fifteen centuries old, — the Jewish Scriptures full of 
it, — the Jewish mind molded by it. 2. Immersion, — new, — 
incongruous, — unmeaning. Carson's double symbolism, 201 



CONTENTS. . 9 

Part VIII. 

THE PURIFYING 3 OF THE JEWS. 

Section XLVII. Accounts in the GospeZs.— Purifying before 
the feasts. The marriage in Cana. Washings and bap- 
tisms, Page 208 

Sectiok XLYIII. Washing Hands before Meals. — Origin of tlie 
rite. The marriage feast, 210 

Section XLIX. Baptism on return from Market. — Market de- 
fined. Jesus at the Piiarisee's table, 214 

Section L. A Various Reading. — Baptizdntai and rantizontai. 
Care taken in transcribing the New Testament. These two 
readings, ._ 21G 

Section LI. Baptisms of Utensils and Furniture. — Their proto- 
types in the Levitical purifyings of things, 219 

Part IX. 

JOHN'S BAPTISM. 

Section LII. History of John^s Mission. — The accounts of it. 
John the herald of the Angel of the Sinai covenant, . . 221 

Section LIII. Israel at the time of John^s Coming. — No longer 
idolatrous, but apostate. Prophetic warnings. They were 
excommunicate from the covenant, 225 

Section LIV. Nature of John^s Baptism. — Elijah the champion 
of the covenant, to the ten tribes. John the same to the 
Jews. His baptism renewed the Sinai seal, 228 

Section LV. Extent of John^s Baptism. — Testimony of the evan- 
gelists. Other evidence. A great revival, 232 

Section LVI. John did not Immerse. — The circumstances forbade 
it. It would have been unmeaning, 237 

Section LVII. John sprinkled with unmingled Water.— Why the 
prophecies speak of water only. " The kingdom " John's 
theme. Hence, water only. It was sprinkled. Some may 
have stood in the water, 241 

♦ V • Part X. 

"""^ CHRIST'S BAPTISMS AND ANOINTING. 

Section LVIII. His Baptism by John. — Various ex])lanations. 
It was part of his obedience. It sealed him Surety of the 
covenant, and certified to him trium])h in his resurrec- 
tion, 247 

Section LIX. His Anointing. — The Spirit given him, at his 



10 CONTENTS. 

birth, — at his baptism, — and at his coronation. Meaning 

and purpose of his anointing, Page 254 

Section LX. *' The Baptism that 1 am Baptized with." — Matt. 
XX, 20-22. The kingdom was to be after tlie resurrection ; 
and upon condition of being wortliy. "Tlic regeneration" 
was typified by the Levitical baptisms. The baptism was his 
resurrection. Luke xii, 50, 257^ 

Part XL 

CHRIST THE GREAT BAPTIZER. 

Section LXI. The Kingdom of the Son of man. — " The kingdom 
of heaven." Destined to man at creation. Satan's scheme. 
The kingdom in the prophets. John's proclamation, Christ's 
triumph and coronation, 267 

Section LXIL Christ is enthroned as Baptizer.- — His commis- 
sion,- — to purge the universe. Order of precedence in the 
Godhead. On earth, Jesus was " in the Spirit." On the 
throne, the Spirit is in and subject to him. ** The promise 
of the Father," • 273 

Section LXIII. Note on the Procession of the Spirit. — History of 
the filioque clause. Objections to it, 281 

Section LXIV. The Baptism of Fire.— The Holy Ghost, and 
fire, two several things. Fire means wrath. The places 
cited against this view. The contrasted language of the evan- 
gelists. Grace and wrath inseparably connected. John's 
theme and imagery are from Malachi. Arguments to iden- 
tify the two baptisms in one. Baptizo. Mode of the bap- 
tism of fire, 284 

Section LXV. The Baptism of Pentecost. — The apostles must 
" wait for the promise.'.' The Spirit poured out, .... 297 

Section LXVL Planner of tlie Baptism. — Pnoe — a breath. Phe- 
romene, — borne forward, — impelled. " He breathed on them." 
It was affusion, signalizing the height where Jesus sits, . 299 

Section LXVIL The New Spirit imparted. — The Spirit no nov- 
elty. Peter's explanation. Hitherto, the church's office 
was conservative. Now the aggressive Spirit of missions 
given, 304 

Section LXVIII. The Tongues like as of Fire. — Not "cloven," 
but " distributed." Like the flame of a lamp. The candle- 
stick. The seven stars. "Arise! shine!" 310 

Section LXIX. The Gift of other Tongues. — Signified the union 
of all people in God's worship. The phrasing of the histo- 
rian. Historv of the sign, 313 



CONTENTS. 11 

Section LXX. The Baptism of Repentance. — ^The firstfruits. 
John's "baptism of repentance." Jesus gives repentance 
and remission. His baptism unites to him and the Father. 
Its manner. The Spirit's relation to it, Page 318 

Section LXXI. PauVs Doctrine of this Baptism. — Titus iii, 4-7. 
Meaning of loutron. 1 Cor. xii, 12-14. Eph. iv, 4-1 G. Gal. 
iii, 27-29. Rom. vi, 2-6. Col. ii, 9-11. The doctrine of these 
places, 323 

Section LXXII. Noah "saved by Water.''— 1 Pet. iii, 17-22. 
Peter and Paul. The theme, — the saints persecuted with im- 
punity. Noah persecuted, and saved by means of the flood. 
Christ's people saved by antitype bax^tism, 333 

Section LXXIII. Christ's Baptizing Administration. — It covers 
his whole work on the throne. In the end, triumph com- 
plete, physical and moral. When he shall have purged earth 
and heaven, then will his baptizing office cease, .... 338 

Section LXXIV. Argument from the Real to Ritual Baptism. — 
The real baptism has to do, not with abasement and the 
grave, but with exaltation and power. But immersion looks 
only to the grave. It is incongruous to all the phenomena 
of Pentecost. Immersed in " the sound from heaven," . . 343 

Part XII. 

THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. 

Section LXXY. Baptizo and the Resurrection. — Elements of 
the Baptist argument. Dr. Conant on baptizo. It leaves its 
subjects in the water. • Dr. Ivendrick's admissions. A sec- 
ond meaning in baptizo, 347 

Section LXXYI. The Prepositions. — En. Eis. Ek. Apo. 
They indicate, not the mode, but the place of the bap- 
tisms, 354 

Section LXXYII. ''Much Water iAere."— Aenon=The Springs. 
Many waters. Why Jesus and John resorted to waters, . 3G0 

Section LXXVIII. ''Buried with him by Baptism into Death." — 
Rom. vi, 2-7. — " Buried with him by the baptism into the 
death." Analysis of the passage. Spiritual baptism alone 
referred to. Immersion incongruous to Paul's concep- 
tion, 3G4 

Section LXXIX. " Buried with him in Baptism." — Col. ii, 9-13. 
The doctrine the same as the preceding. Union with the 
Lord Jesus the controlling idea. " Buried with him in (or, 
by) the baptism." The idea of immersion perplexes the ex- 
egesis, 371 



12 CONTENTS. 

Section LXXX. End of the Baptist Argument — Baptist schol- 
ars concede that haptizo does not mean, to dip, only. It can 
not then decide the mode. They admit that it leaves its 
subject in the water. It knows then nothing of the resur- 
rection. The prepositions and waters of Enon do not help 
the cause. Paul's burial " in the baptism," does not allude 
to the ritual ordinance. In all its parts, the argument 
fails, Page 374 

Part XIII. 

BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. 

Section LXXXI. Contrary to the whole Tenor of the Gospel. — 
The mystery of iniquity early developed. The gospel church 
viewed as the antitype of the Levitical. The Scriptures are 
not so. Treatment of baptism by the evangelists. Paul's 
testimony, 377 

Section LXXXII. Born of Water and of the Spirit. — John iii, 
4-8. Metaphor of water. " Water even the Spirit." John 
had already stated the way of the new birth, 384 

Section LXXXIII. " The Washing of Water, by the Word."— 
The bridal bath. No formula of baptism. "Sanctify them 
through thy truth," 390 

Part XIV. 

THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH. 

Section LXXXIV. The Ritual Law is unrepealed. — Christ so 
left it. The apostles were zealous for it. The council of Je- 
rusalem exempted the Gentiles only. James and Paul unite 
to show it still in force. Paul's practice. He obeyed the 
law, but rei)udiated its righteousness. This view alone har- 
monizes the history, 393 

Section LXXXV. Why the Gentiles were exempted. — Not be- 
cause the law expired. But, unsuited to a world wide ex- 
tension. Its chief end accomplished. What its survival im- 
plied, 406 

Section LXXXVI. The Christian Passover.— Wine, and blood. 
The passover a type of Christ's atonement. It is perpet- 
uated in the Supper, 408 

Section LXXXVII. The Hebrew CJiristian Church.— The syn- 
agogue system. The sects of Pharisees, Sadducees and Naz- 
arenes. The number and diffusion of the Nazarenes. The 
Hebrew church after the destruction of Jerusalem, . . . 411 



CONTENTS. 13 

Section LXXXVIII. The Gentiles Graffed in. — Mixed churches. 
Gentile churches. " Out of Zion the law." The Gentiles 
graffed m, Page 418 

Part XV. - 

CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. 

Section LXXXIX. History of the Rite. — The cotemporaneous 
baptisms of John and Jesus. Both were the same Chris- 
tian baptism. Christ did not institute baptism, but gave it 
to the Gentiles. Rebaptism at Ephesus. Note on rebap- 
tism, 424 

Section XC. ^^ Baptizing them into the Name.'''' — 1. Into the 
name. En; epi ; eis. "Into Christ." "Into the name of 
Christ." 2. "T]ie name of the Father and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost." — "The name of the Lord 
Jesus," 431 

Section XCI. " He that Bclieveth and is Baptized.^^ — It refers to 
ritual baptism ; and is a caution against trust in it. ■ Faith is 
the essential thing, 437 

Section XCII. The Formula. — Ritualisiic vicAV. No formula 
prescribed by Christ, nor used by the apostles, 438 

Section XCIII. Tlie Administration on Pentecost. — There was a 
baptism with water. Dr. Dale's objections, 440 

Section XCIV. The meaning of this Baptism. — It could but sym- 
bolize the baptism of the Spirit. The two formulas thus 
reconciled, 446 

Section XCV. The Mode of this Baptism. — Immersion incon- 
gruous and impossible. They were baptized in groups with 
a hyssop bushj 448 

Section XCVI. Other Illustrations. — The eunuch. The apostle 
Paul. The house of Cornelius. The jailer. None of these 
look to immersion, 451 

Section XCVII. ^'Baptized into Moses." — Moses and Israel 
were types. Dr. Kendrick contradicts the record. By this 
baptism Israel were brought into a new state of faith and 
obedience, 457 

Part XVI. 

TUB FAMILY AND THE CHILDREN. 

Section XCVIII. Christ and the Children. — A retrospect. Christ's 
attitude toward the lambs. Peter's commission. The Jews 



14 CONTENTS. 

predominant in the church. The Sinai covenant recognized 
the children and made place for the Gentiles, . . . Page 461 

Section XCIX. " Novj are they Holyy — Unclean, and holy. 
Israel a holy nation. " The saints." The Baptist exegesis 
of the language, 4CG 

Section C. Household Baptisms. — Not "infant," but "family 
baptism." Lydia's house. The jailer and all his. The 
house of Stephanas. These, in the light of fifteen centuries 
preceding, and of the everlasting covenant, 471 

Conclusion. 

Christ's real baptism with the Spirit is the criterion of all 
baptismal doctrines and rites. Baptismal regeneration tr?ed 
and rejected. The evidence against immei-sion cumulative 
and overwhelming, 470 



INTRODUCTION. 



THE history of the ritual ordinances of God's appointment is full 
of painful interest. Passing any reference to the times preced- 
ing the transactions of Sinai, — the institutions then given to Israel 
constituted a system of transpiirent significance, perfect in the con- 
gruous symmetry and simplicity of the parts and comprehensive 
fullness of the whole, as setting forth the whole doctrine of God 
concerning man's sin and salvation. Designed not only for the in- 
struction of Israel, but for a light to the darkness of the surround- 
ing Gentile world, its truths were embodied in symbols which spake 
to evei'y people of every tongue in their own language. Copied in 
imperfect and perverted forms into the rites of Gentile idolatry, — 
although distorted, veiled and dislocated from their normal rela- 
tions, they shed gleams of twilight into the gloom of spiritual 
darkness, and prepared the world for the dawning of the Sun of 
Piigliteousness, when he rose upon the nations. To multitudes of 
Israel, those ordinances Avcre efficient means of eminent grace. With 
gladness, they saw therein, — as through a glass, darkly, it may be, 
but surely, — adumbrations of the salvation, grace and glory of the 
Messiah's kingdom. And, if the fact be considered that at one of 
the darkest crises in Israel's history, when the prophet cried, — "I, 
even I am left alone," — God could assure him, — "Yet have I left 
seven thousand," — we may possibly find occasion to revise our pre- 
conceptions concei-ning the history of the gospel in Israel. Still, 
undoubtedly there were multitudes in every generation of that 
people to whom the gospel preached in the ordinances brought no 
profit, for lack of faitli. In their earlier history, indifference and 
neglect, and in the later, a self-righteous zeal for the mere outward 
rites and forms, were equally fatal. The splendor of the ritual, and 
the superfluous vai-iety and frequency of the observances, were a 
poor substitute for faith toward God, and rectitude of heart and life. 
The result was that wlien Christ came, who was the end of all the 
rites and ordinances of the law, those who were the most strict and 
zealous in their observance were his betrayers and murderers. 

When the Lord Jesus ascended the heavens, assumed the throne, 
and sent forth the gospel to the Gentiles, it was accompanied by two 
simple ordinances, which were eliminated out of those of the Leviti- 



1 6 INTR OD UCTION. 

cal ritual, by the omiss'on of the element of sacrifice. In them was 
symbolized and set forth tlie wliole riches of that salvation which 
was represented in the more cumbrous forms of the Levitical sys- 
tem. By the supper, was signified the mystery of his atoning suffer- 
ings, and of the nourishment of his people by faith therein. By 
baptism, was shown forth (he glory of his exaltation, and the sover- 
eignty and power with which he sheds from his throne the blessings 
of his grace. But very soon, these ordinances, so beautiful aftd 
instructive in their simplicity, were corrupted through the mis- 
conceptions and ignorance of the teachers of the church. The 
Mosaic ritual, instead of being recognized, as Paul describes it, as a 
pattern or similitude of the things in the heavens, was regarded as a 
type of the New Testament church and of the ordinances therein ad- 
ministered. This one error became the inevitable cause of corrup- 
tion and apostasy. Respecting the impending defection, Paul assured 
the Thessalonians, that the mysteiy of iniquity was already at work; 
and forewarned the elders of Ephesus of the coming of grievous 
wolves to rend the flock, and of apostasies among themselves, 
through the lust of an unhallowed ambition. 

We have not the means, from the scanty and corrupted records 
which remain, of the age immediately following the apostles, of 
tracing the process of defection. But when, at length, the church 
emerges into the light of history, it is found to have realized a fatal 
transformation. The pastors and elders of the apostolic churches, 
from being simple preachers of the word, have become priests minis- 
tering at the altar, and offering better sacrifices than those made by 
the Aaronic line. For, while the latter offered mere animals, and 
the worshippers fed upon mere carnal food, the former, in the saci*a- 
ment of the supper, the supposed antitype of those offerings, were 
believed to offer the body and blood of the Lord Jesus, and the peo- 
ple, in those elements, imagined themselves to receive and feed upon 
that very body and blood. So, too, while the "type baptisms'' of the 
ancient ritual accomplished a mere purifying of the flesh, the bap- 
tism of water by the hands of the Christian ministry was regarded 
as the antitype of these, and considered effectual for accomplishing a 
spiritual regeneration, a renewing of the heart of the recipient. 

The same error which thus corrupted the doctrine of the sacra- 
ments, was equally efficient in changing their forms. As they were 
held to be the antitypes of the Old Testament rites, if was sought to 
develop in them features to correspond with all the details of those 
rites, and to give them a dignity, a pomp and ceremonial, propor- 
tioned to their relations as fulfilling the tilings set forth in the 
splendid ritual of Moses and David. The rite of baptism, particu- 
larly, was corrupted by alterations and additions which left scarcely 



introduction: 17 

any thing of the primitive institution, save the name. The Lcviti- 
cal purifyings were especially observed in connection vv^ith the 
annual feasts at Jerusalem. In like manner, the administration of 
baptism was discouraged, except in connection with two of those 
feasts, — the passover, and the feast of weeks, or of firstfruits, — 
transferred into the Christian church, under the names of Easter, 
and Pentecost, or Whitsunday; the latter being named from the 
white garments in which the newly baptized were robed. The ad- 
ministration was connected with an elaborate system of attendant 
observances. First, was a course of fastings, genuflections, and 
prayers, and the imposition of hands upon the candidate. Then, he 
was divested of all but a single under garment, and facing the west, 
the realm of darkness, was required, wi(h defiant gesture of the 
hand, to renounce Satan and all his works. This was followed by 
an exorcism, the minister breathing upon the candidate, for expelling 
Satan, and imparting the Hol^^ Spirit; then the making upon him 
of the sign of the cross; anointing him with oil, once before and 
once after the baptism; the administration of salt, milk and honey, 
and three immersions, one at the name of each person of the Trinity. 
Such was the connection in which baptism by immersion first ap- 
pears. For its reception, the candidate, of whateve-r sex, was inva- 
riably divested of all clothing, and, after it, was robed in a white 
garment, emblematic of the spotless purity now attained. The rite 
of baptism by bare sprinkling, however, still survived. And the 
question is entitled to a critical attention which it has not yet received, 
whether, always or generally, the more elaborate rite consisted in a 
submersion of the candidate. Against this supposition, is the practice 
of the Abyssinian, Greek, Nestorian and other churches of the east. 
In them, the candidate, in preparation for the rite, is placed, or we 
may say, immersed, naked, in a font of water, the quantity of which 
neither suffices, nor is ii\tended, to cover him. The administrator 
then performs the baptism, wliile pionouncing the formula, by thrice 
pouring water on the candidate, once at the mention of each name 
of the blessed Godhead. ••■ To the same effect is the evidence of 
numerous remains of Christian art, which have been transmitted to 
us from the early ages. Among these are several representations of 
the baptism of the Lord Jesus by John; one, of that of Constantino 
and his wife, by Eusebius; and others. The baptism of Constantine 
precisely corresponds with the description above given. The cm- 



"=My aulhorities are "A voyage to Abyssinia, and travels in the interior of 
tliiit country, executed under the orders of the Hrilisli government, in the years 
'1809 and 1810, etc., I.y Henry Salt, Esq., F. R. S., etc., London, 1814;" and tlie 
I»eisonal testiinonies of several ol our missiouaries to the east, who have related 
to lue wliat they saw. 



18 INTRODUCTION. 

peror is seated naked in a vessel, which if full would not reach to 
his waist; and the bishop is in the act of performing the baptism by 
pouring water upon them, lu the representations of the baptism 
of Jesus, he sometimes appears waist-deep in the Jordan, and some- 
times on the land. But in all cases, the rite is performed by the 
baptist pouring water on his head out of a cup or shell. Such is, in 
fact, the invariable mode represented in these remains of anojent art. 

In this connectiju the analogy of the forms of religions purify- 
ing prevalent throughout the e-\st is worthy of special notice. The 
Brahmin, before taking his morning's meal, repairs to the Ganges, 
carrying with him a brazen vessel. By hundreds, or by thousands, 
they enter the stream, and while some take up the water in their 
vessels, and pour it over their persons, others plunge beneath the 
stream, for the purging away of their sins. Then filling the vessels, 
they repair to the temple, and pour the water upon the idol, or as a 
libation, before it. The Parsee, worshiper of the sun, goes, in the 
morning, to river or sea, and entering until the waves are waist 
high, with his face toward the east, awnits the rising of the sun, 
when, using his joined hands as a dipper, he dashes water over his 
person, and makes obeisance to his god. On the other hand, the 
Mohammedan, deriving his usage from the earlier Pharisaic ritual, 
repairs to the mosque, and from the tank in front, without entering 
it, takes up water in his hands with which to bathe face, feet and 
hands, before presenting his praj^ers. 

By the corruptions in the Christian church, before exemplified, 
the key of knowledge was taken away from the people. The in- 
structive meaning of the sacraments was obscured and obliterated, by 
the idea of their intrinsic efficacy for renewing the heart and aton- 
ing for and purging sin. The preaching of the word was disparaged 
and ultimately set aside; the preachers having become propitiating 
priests, working regeneration by the baptismal rite, and making 
atonement by the sacrifice of the mass. The corruption and tyranny 
of the clergy of the middle ages, and the ignorance, slavery and spir- 
itual darkness which for centuries brooded over the people, were the 
inevitable results. 

The reformation came, through the recovery by Luther. of the 
golden doctrine of justification by faith, w^hich had so long been bur- 
ied and lost under the accumulated mass of ritualistic error. But 
even Luther was unable to shake off the fetters of superstition and 
falsehood in which he had been cradled, and to enjoy the full liberty 
of the doctrine which he gave to the awakened church. In the dogma 
of consubstantiation, he transmitted to his folloAvers the ver}'^ error 
which had corrupted the church for more than a thousand years. 
And the result in the churches of his confession has added another 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

to the already abundant evidence of the ever active and irrecon- 
cilable antagonism which oxists between the (heoi-y of sacramental 
grace, and the doctrine, — criterion of a standing or falling church, — 
of justification by free grace through faith. 

Our space does not admit of a critical tracing of the history of 
the sacramental question in the churches of the reformation. On the 
one hand, ritualists of every grade, misled by the erring primitive 
church, and attributing to the sacraments a saving virtue intrinsic 
in them, render indeed high but mistaken honor to the sacred rites; 
but fail to enjoy them in their true intent and office, or to view and 
honor them in their proper character. On the other hand, our im- 
niersionist brethren, misguided respecting the form of baptism, by 
the same erring example, and thus lost to the true and comprehensive 
meaning of the ordinance, have failed to apprehend the instruction 
which it was designed to impart, and to enjoy the abundant edifying 
which it was adapted to minister; and, instead, have found it a potent 
agent of separation, ajid an efficient temptation to the indulgence of 
a disproportionate zeal on behalf of mere oulwai'd rites amd forms. 

Nor do those who have escnped these errors always seem to ap- 
preciate the sacraments, in their true design and character, as ever 
active and efficient witnesses, testifying to the gospel, through sym- 
bols as intelligible and impressive as the most eloquentspeech. The 
beauty and rich significance of the supper have, indeed, been in a 
measure apprehended, and made available in some just proportion, 
to the instruction and edifying of God's people. But baptism has 
not held the place, in the ministrations of the sanctuary and the 
mind of the chui-ch, which is due to its office and design, to the rich- 
ness of meaning of its forms, and to the sublime conceptions and the 
lofty fispirations and hopes which it is so wonderfully adapted to 
create and cherish. One efficient cause of this, undoubtedly, is, the 
reaction induced by the aggressive zeal of immersionists, and the 
exercise of a false charity toward their erroneous sentiments; as 
though the charity of the gospel, as towai-d our brethren, consisted 
in an acceptance of their errors as equivalents to the truths of God. 
While they havejiistly nnd irrefragably maintsiined that nothing can 
be Christian bnptism which lias not at once the form and the moan- 
ing ordained by Christ, we have been weakly disposed to imagine 
ourselves patterns of charity, in admitting the validity of immer- 
sion, while denying it to be the forrri or to have the meaning which 
Christ ordained. As if such an ordinance, from the great Head of 
the Church, could have.in it any thing indifferent, or subject to our 
discretion, whether in doctrine or mode! The immediate and inevit- 
able result is, a low estimate of the ordinance itself; indifference alike 
to its form and m^iauing, and lo the place it was designed to fill, and 



20 INTR OD UCTION. 

tlie offices which it. was to perform, in the economy of grace. As a 
mere door of entrance into the fold of the church, it is administered 
and received; with too little regard to its beautiful and comprehen- 
sive symbolism; and, once performed, it is almost lost sight of in the 
instructions of the pulpit, and meditations of the people. Should this 
representation suggest a doubt, let the reader reflect how often, in 
the ordinary ministrations of the sanctuai-y, he has heard the sig- 
nificance of baptism dwelt upon, or even alluded to, for illustrating 
the great truths of the gospel, on any occasion except that of the 
administration of the rite; and how seldom, even then, the richness 
of its symbolic import is unfolded, — its relations to Christ's exalta- 
tion and throne, and to all the functions of his scepter; the mean- 
ing of the element of water, and of the mode of sprinkling; and 
the office of the ordinance, as a symbol of the Spirit's renewing 
grace, and a prophecy and seal to the doctrine of the resurrection. 
As the initial seal of the covenant, it is discussed and insisted 
upon. But of these, its intrinsic and most interesting character- 
istics, but little is heard. No wonder, therefore, that the privilege 
of its reception is so little appreciated, and its appropriation by 
parents on behalf of their children, so often neglected. 

The recent researches of Drs. Conant and Dale have exhausted 
the philological argument as concerning hoptizo. The former, rep- 
resenting the American (Baptist) Bible Union, and the latter, from 
the opposite standpoint, have come to conclusions which, to all the 
practical purposes of the discussion, are identical and final. Essen- 
tially, they agree (1) that baptizo never means, to dip, that is, to put 
into the water and take out again; but, primarily, to put into or 
under the water, — to bring into a state of niersion, or intusposition; 
(2) that it also means to bring into a new "state or condition, by the 
exercise of a pervasive control; as one who is intoxicated is said to 
be baptized with wiiie. Tlie former of these meanings is all that 
remains to the Baptist argument from the word. The latter is all 
that is desired by those who repudiate immersion. Tlie philological 
discussion being thus brought to a practical termination, the occa- 
sion seems opportune for inviting attention to the real issues in- 
volved in the question respecting the form of the ordinance; and to 
the various and abundant testimonies of the Scriptures, as to its 
origin and office, its mode and meaning, its history and associations. 

In the same line of investigation, it is tlie expectation of the 
writer, should time and opportunity concur, to offer to the Christian 
public, at some future day, a treatise, similar in plan to that now 
presented, on the ordinances and church of God, liistorically trnced 
from the apostasy, and the renewal of the covenant in Eden, to the 
close of the sacred volume. 



BIBLE HISTORY OF BAPTISM, 



Book I. 
OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. 



A 



Part I. 

BAPTISM AT SINAI. 

Section I. — Baptism Originated in the Old Testament. 
T the time of Christ's coming, baptism was a rite already 



familiar to the Jews. The evangelists testify of them 
that, '' when they come from the market, except they hap- 
tize (ean me haptisontai) they eat not. And many other 
things there be which they have received to hold, as the 
baptisms (haptismous) of cups and pots and brazen vessels 
and tables." — Mark vii, 3, 4. On account of this rule of 
tradition, a Pharisee at whose table Jesus was a guest 
*' marveled that he had not first baptized (ebaptisthe) before 
dinner." — Luke xi, 38. Hence, when John came, a priest, 
baptizing, there was no question raised as to the origin, na- 
ture, form, or divine authority of the ordinance which he 
administered. The Pharisees, in their challenge of him, 
confine themselves to the single demand, by what author- 
ity he ventured to require Israel to come to his baptism, 
since he confessed that he was neither Christ nor Elias 
nor that prophet. (John i, 25.) Their familiarity with 
the rite forbade any (piestion concerning it. Had we no 
further light on tlie subject, we might suppose that this ordi- 



22 BAPTISM AT SL\AI. [Paut I. 

nauce had no better source than the unauthorized inven- 
tions of Jewish tradition. But the Apostle Paul,* an He- 
brew of the Hebrews, taught at the feet of Gamaliel, and 
versed in all questions of the law, excludes such an idea. 
He declares that in the first tabernacle " were offered both 
gifts and sacrifices that could not make him that did the 
service perfect as pertaining to the conscience ; wdiich stood 
only in meats and drinks and (diaphorois baptismois) divers 
baijtisms — carnal ordinances imposed on them until the 
time of reformation." — Heb. ix, 9, 10. The conjunction 
*' and" (" divers baptisms and carnal ordinances") is want- 
ing in the best Greek manuscripts ; is rejected by the crit- 
ical editors, and is undoubtedly spurious. The phrase 
" carnal ordinances" is not an additional item in the enu- 
meration, but a comprehensive description of' " the meats 
and drinks and divers baptisms " of the laW' . Paul thus 
speaks of them by way of contrast with the spiritual grace 
and righteousness of the Lord Jesus. A critical examina- 
tion of this passage will be made hereafter. For the pres- 
ent, we note two points as attested by the apostle : 

1. Among the Levitical ordinances there were not one 
but divers baptisms. 

2. These were not merely allowable rites, but were *' im- 
posed " on Israel as part of the institutions ordained of God 
at Sinai. 

It may be proper to add that they were baptisms of 
persons, and not of things. They w-ere rites w^hich were de- 
signed to purify the flesh of the worshiper, (vs. 9, 13, 14.) 

These baptisms w^ere, therefore, well known to Israel, 
from the days of Moses. This explains the fact that, in 
the New Testament, we find no instruction as to the form 
of the ordinance. It was an ancient rite, described in the 
books of Moses and familiar to the Jews when Christ came. 
No description, therefore, was requisite. We are then to 

* I assume what I believe to be demonstrable, that Paul w^as 
the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 



Sec. 11.] A'O IMMERSION THERE. " 23 

look to the Old Testament to ascertaiu the form and man- 
Der of baptism. 

Section II. — iVb Immersions in the Old Testament. 

Says Dr. Carson : ' ' We deny that the phrase ' divers 
baptisms ' includes the sprinklings. The phrase alludes to 
the immersion of the different things that by the law were 
to be immersed."'^ Had this learned writer pointed out the 
things that were to be immersed, and the places in the law 
where this was required, it \vould have saved us some 
trouble. In default of such information, our first inquiry 
in turning to the Old Testament will be for that form of 
observance. We take up the books of Moses, and exam- 
ine his instructions as to all the prominent institutions of 
divine service. But among these we find no immersion of 
the person. We enter into minuter detail, and study every 
rule and prescription of the entire system as enjoined on 
priests, Levites, and people, respectively. But still there 
is no trace of an ordinance for the immersion of the person 
or any part of it. We extend our field of inquiry, and 
search the entire volume of the Old Testament. But the 
result remains the same. From the first chapter of Gen- 
esis to the last of Malachi, there is not to be found a rec- 
ord nor an intimation of such an ordinance imposed on Is- 
rael or observed by them at any time. Not only is this 
true as to baptismal immersion performed by an official 
administrator upon a recipient subject. It is equally 
true as to any conceivable form or mode of immersion, 
self-performed or administered. There is no trace of it. 
But here is Paul's testimony that there were ''divers bap- 
tisms imposed." By baptisms, then, Paul certainly did not 
mean immersions. 

The impregnable position thus reached is further forti- 
fied by the fact that, in all the variety and exuberance of 

■"■•■"Carson on Baptism" (published by C. C. P. Crosby: 
New York, 1832), p. 117. 



24 *" BAPTISM AT SINAI. [Paut I. 

figurative language used in the Bible to illustrate the 
method of God's grace, no recourse is ever had to the fig- 
ure of immersion. All agree that the sacraments are sig- 
nificant ordinances. If, then, the significance of baptism 
at all depends on the immersion of the person in water, we 
would justly expect to find frequent use of the figure of 
immersion, as representing the spiritual realities of which 
baptism is the symbol. But we search the Scriptures in 
vain for that figure so employed. It never once occurs. 

Section III. — Tlie Old Testament Sacraments. 

As there are no immersions in the Old Testament, 
we must look for the divers baptisms under some other 
form. Assuming that in this rite there must be a sacra- 
mental use of water, we will first examine the ancient sac- 
raments. On a careful analysis of the ordinances compre- 
hended in the Levitical system, we find among them four 
which strictly conform to the definition of a sacrament, and 
which are the only sacraments described or referred to in 
the Old Testament. 

1. Sacrifice. — The first of these in origin and prominence 
was sacrifice. Originating in Eden, and incorporated in 
the Levitical system, it had all the characteristics of a sac- 
rament. In it the life blood of clean animals was shed and 
sprinkled, and their bodies burned upon the altar. Thus 
were represented the shedding of Christ's blood, and his 
ofl^eriug of atonement to the justice of God. But here is no 
water. It is not the baptism for which Ave seek. 

2. Circumcision. — The second of the Old Testament sac- 
raments was circumcision, whereby God sealed to Abra- 
ham and his seed the covenant of blessings to them and 
all nations through the blood of the promised Seed. Here, 
again, no one will pretend to identify the ordinance with 
the baptisms of Paul. 

3. The Passover. — The third of the Old Testament sac- 
raments, the first of the Levitical dispensation, was the 



Skc. IV.] BAPTISM OF ISRAEL. 25 

feast of the passover. In it, the paschal lamb was slaiu, 
its blood sprinkled on the lintels and door posts of the 
houses, and the flesh roasted and eaten with unleavened 
bread and bitter herbs. At Sinai, this ordinance was mod- 
ified by requiring the feast to be observed at the sanctuary, 
the blood being sprinkled on the altar, and the fat burned 
thereon. And, to the other elements appointed in Egypt, 
the general provisions of the Mosaic law added wine. All 
peace offerings, free will offerings, and offerings at the sol- 
emn feasts, of which the passover was one, Avere to be ac- 
companied with Avine, and were eaten by the offerers, ex- 
cept certain parts, that were burned on the altar. (See 
Num. XV, 5, 7, 10; xxviii, 7, 14.) This ordinance, elim- 
inated of its sacrificial elements, is perpetuated in the 
Lord's supper. In it was no water. It was 'not the rite 
for which we seek. 

4. Bapthm. — There remains but one more of the Mo- 
saic sacraments. . It was instituted at Sinai. In it, water 
was essential, and by it was symbolized the renewing agency 
of the Holy Spirit. It was "a purification' for sin," an 
initiatory ordinance, by which remission of sins and admis- 
sion to the benefits of the covenant were signified and sealed 
to the faith of the recipients. It occupied, under the Old 
Testament economy, the very position, and had the signifi- 
cance, which belong to Christian baptism under the New. 
Moreover, it appears under several modifications, and is 
thus conformed to Paul's designation of " divers baptisms," 
whilst these, in their circumstantial variations,, were essen- 
tially one and the same ordinance. 

Section IV. — The Baptism of Israel at Sinai, 

The occasion of the first recorded administration of this 
rite was the reception of Israel into covenant with God at 
Sinai. For more than two hundred years they had dwelt 
in Egypt, and for a large part of the time had been bond- 
men there. The history of their sojourn in the wilderness 



26 BAPTISM AT SINAI. [Part T. 

shows tliat uot only was their manliood debased by the 
bond;^ge, but their souls had been corrupted by the idola- 
tries of the Egyptians (Josh, xxiv, 14; Ezek. xx, 7), and 
they had foi'gotten the covenant and forsaken the God of 
their fathers. They w^ere apostate, and, in Scriptural lan- 
guage, unclean. 

But now the fullness of time had come, w^hen the prom- 
ises made to the fathers must be fulfilled. Leaving the 
nations to walk after their own ways, God was about to 
erect to himself a visible throne and kingdom among men, 
to be a witness for him against the apostasy of the race. 
He was about to arouse Israel from her debasement and 
slavery, to establish with her his covenant, and to organize 
and ordain her his peculiar j)eople — his Church. 

Proportioned to the importance of such an occasion was 
the grandeur of the scene and the gravity of the transac- 
tions. Of them we have two accounts, one from the pen 
of Moses (Ex. xx-xxiv), and the other from the Apostle 
Paul, in exposition of his statement as to the divers baptisms. 
(Heb. ix, 18-20.) As to these accounts, two or three points 
of explanation are necessary. (1) The two words, "cove- 
nant" and "testament," represent but one in the originals in 
these places, -of which "covenant" is the literal meaning. 
(2) Paul mentions water (Heb. ix, 19), of which INIoses 
does not speak. The fact is significant, as the apostle is 
in the act of illustrating the " divers baptisms," of which 
he had just before spoken. (3) The word " oxen," in our 
translation j^Ex. xxiv, 5), should be "bulls." Oxen -were 
not lawful for sacrifice. Yearling animals seem to have been 
preferred. Says Micah, " Shall I come before the Lord with 
burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old?" — Micah vi, 6. 
Hence Paul indiflTerently calls them bulls and calves. The 
goats of which he speaks were no doubt among the burnt- 
ofierings of Moses's narrative. Both "small and great cattle" 
seem to have been offered on all great national solemnities. 

The redeemed tribes came to Sinai in the third month 



Sec. IV.] BAPTISM OF ISRAEL. 27 

after the exodus. Moses was called up into the mount 
and commanded to propose to them the covenant of God. 
It was in these terms: "If ye will obey my voice indeed, 
and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure 
unto me above all people, for all the earth is mine, and ye 
shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." — 
Ex. xix, 3-6. This proposal the people, with one voice, 
accepted. God then commanded Moses : ' ' Sanctify the 
people to-day and to-morrow, and let them wash their 
clothes and be ready against the third day ; for the third 
day the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people 
upon Mount Sinai." — Vs. 10, 11. On the third day, in 
the morning, there were thunders and lightnings, and a 
thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet 
exceeding loud, so that all the j^eople trembled. And 
Mount Sinai w^as altogether on a smoke, because the Lord 
descended upon it in fire, and the smoke thereof ascended 
as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked 
greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded 
long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God 
answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon 
the top of the mount ; and the Lord called Moses up to 
the top of the mount, and Moses went up. 

In the midst of this tremendous scene, so well calcu- 
lated to fill the people with awe, and to deter them from 
the thouglit of a profane approach, Moses was nevertheless 
charged to go down and warn the people, and set bounds 
around the mountain, lest they should break through unto 
the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish. After such 
means, used to impress Israel with a profound sense of 
God's majesty and their infinite estrangement from him, 
his voice was heard, uttering in their ears the Ten Com- 
mandments, prefaced with the announcement of himself 
as their God and Redeemer. (Compare Deut. iv, 7-13.) 
At the entreaty of the people, the terribleness of God's 
audil)lc voice was withdrawn, and Moses was sent to tell 



28 BAPTISM A T SINAI. [Part I. 

them the words of the Lord and his judgments. The 
people again unanimously declared, "All the words which 
the Lord hath said, will we do." — Ex. xxiv, 3. 

In this sublime transaction we have all the scenes and 
circumstances of a mighty revival of true religion. It is 
a vast camp-meeting, in which God himself is the preacher, 
speaking in men's ears with an audible voice from the top 
of Sinai, and alternately proclaiming the law of righteous- 
ness and the gospel of grace, calling Israel from their 
idolatries and sins to return unto him, and offering him- 
self as not only the God of their fathers, but their own 
Deliverer already from the Egyptian bondage, and ready 
to be their God and portion — to give them at once the 
earthly Canaan, and to make it a pledge of their ulti- 
mate endowment with the heavenly. The people had pro- 
fessed with one accord to turn to God, and pledged them- 
selves, emphatically and repeatedly, to take him as their 
God, to walk in his statutes and do his will, to be his 
people. 

It is true that, to many, the gospel then preached was 
of no profit, for lack of faith ; whose carcasses therefore fell 
in the wilderness. (Heb. iii, 17-19 ; iv, 2.) But it is equally 
true that the vast majority of the assembly at Sinai were 
children and generous youth, who had not yet been besotted 
by the Egyptian bondage. To them that day, which was 
known in their after history as " the day of the assembly" 
(Dent. X, 4; xviii, 16), was the beginning of days. Its 
sublime scenes became in them the spring of a living faith. 
With honest hearts they laid hold of the covenant, and 
took the God of the patriarchs for their God. Soon after, 
the promise of Canaan, forfeited by their rebellious fathers, 
was transferred to them. (Num. xiv, 28-34.) Trained 
and disciplined by the forty years' wandering, it was they 
who became, through faith, the irresistible host of God, the 
heroic conquerors and possessors of the land of joromise. 
Centuries afterward, God testified of them that they pleased 



Sec. IV.] BAPTISM OF ISRAEL. 29 

him: "I remember thee, the kiudness of thy youth, the 
love of thine espousals, when thou weutest after me in the 
wilderness, in a land that was not sowy. Israel was holi- 
ness to the Lord, and the firstfruits of his increase." — Jer. 
ii, 2, 3. Until the day of Pentecost, no day so memora- 
Dle, no work of grace so mighty, is recorded in the history 
of God's dealings with men as that of the assembly at 
Sinai. 

And as on the day of Pentecost the converts were bap- 
tized upon their profession of faith, so was it now. Moses 
appointed the next day for a solemn ratifying of the 
transaction. He wrote in a book the words of the Lord's 
covenant, the Ten Commandments; and in the morning, 
at the foot of the mount, built an altar of twelve stones, 
according to the twelve tribes. On it young men designated 
by him offered burnt-offerings and sacrificed peace-offerings 
of young bulls. Moses took half the blood and sprinkled 
it on the altar. Half of it he kept in basins. He then 
read the covenant from the book, in the audience of all the 
people, who again accepted it, saying, ''All that the Lord 
hath said will we do, and be obedient." Moses thereupon 
took the blood that was in the basins, with water and 
scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and 
all the people, saying, " Behold the blood of the covenant 
which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these 
words." — Ex. xxiv, 8^ compared with Heb. ix, 19, 20. 

In the morning Moses had already, by divine com- 
mand, assembled Aaron, Ifadab and Abihu, and seventy 
of the elders of Israel. And no sooner was the covenant 
finally accepted and sealed with the baptismal rite, than 
these all went up into the mount, and there celebrated the 
feast of the covenant. "They' saw the God of Israel ; 
and there was under his feet, as it were, a paved work of 
a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in 
his clearness. And upon the nobles of Israel, he laid not 
his hand. Also, they saw the God of Israel, and did eat 



30 BAPTISM AT SINAI. [Part I. 

and drink." — Ex. xxiv, 1, 9-11. So intimate, privileged, 
and spiritual was the relation which the covenant estab- 
lished between Israel and God. 

Thus was closed this sublime transaction, ever memora- 
ble in the history of man and of the church of Christ, in 
Avhich the invisible God condescended to clothe himself in 
the majesty of visible glory, to hold audible converse with 
men, to enter into the bonds of a public and perpetual 
covenant with them, and to erect them into a kingdom, 
on the throne of which his presence was revealed in the 
Shechinah of glory. 

Such were the occasion and manner of the first insti- 
tution and observance of the sacrament of baptism. In 
its attendant scenes and circumstances, the most august of 
all God's displays of his majesty and grace to man ; and 
in its occasion and nature, paramount in importance, and 
lying at the foundation of the entire administration of 
grace through Christ. It was the establishing of the vis- 
ible church. 

Section V. — Tlie Blood of Sprinkling. 

In all the Sinai transactions, Moses stood as the pre-emi- 
nent type of the Lord Jesus Christ ; and the rites admin- 
istered by him were figures of the heavenly realities of 
Christ's sacrifice and salvation. This is fully certified by 
Paul, throughout the epistle to the Hebrews, and especially 
in the illustration which he gives of his assertion con- 
cerning the divers baptisms irrfposed on Israel. See Heb. 
ix, 9-14, 19-28. In these places, it distinctly appears 
that the blood of the Sinai baptism was typical of the 
atonement of Christ. Not only in this, but in all the 
Levitical baptisms, as will hereafter appear, blood was 
necessary to the rite. In fact, it was an essential element 
in each of the Old Testament sacraments. The one idea 
of sacrifice was the blood of atonement. The same idea 
appeared in circumcision, revealing atonement by the blood 



Sec. VI.] THE LIVING WATER. 31 

of the seed of Abraham. lu the passover the blood of 
sprinkUug was the most couspicuous feature ; and in the 
Sinai baptism blood and water were the essential elements. 
Peter states the Old Testament prophets to have "in- 
quired and searched diligently, searching what, or what 
manner of time the Spirit of Christ wliich was in them 
did signify, when if testified beforehand the sufferings of 
Christ and the glory that should follow." — 1 Pet. i, 10, 11. 
Of the time and manner they were left in ignorance. But 
the blood, in aU their sacraments, was a lucid symbol, 
pointing them forward to the sufferings of Christ as the 
essential and alone argument of the favor and grace of 
God. In it, and in the rites associated with it, they sa^^ 
dimly it may be, but surely, the blessed pledge that in 
the fullness of time "the Messenger of the covenant" 
would appear (Mai. iii, 2), magnify the law and make it 
honorable (Isa.-xlii, 21), by his knowledge, justify many, 
bearing their iniquities (Isa. liii, 11), and sprinkle the 
mercy-seat in heaven, once for all, with his own precious 
and effectual blood — the blood of the everlasting covenant. 
(Heb. ix, 24-26; xiii, 20; 1 Pet. i, 11.) 

Section VI. — The Living Water. 

In the Sinai baptism, as at first administered to all 
Israel, and in all its subsequent forms, living or running 
water was an essential element. This everywhere, in the 
Scriptures of the Old Testament and of the New, is the 
symbol of the Holy Spirit, in his office as the agent by 
whom the virtue of Christ's blood is conveyed to men, and 
spiritual life bestowed. In the figurative language of the 
Scriptures, the sea, or great body of salt or dead water, 
represents the dead mass of fallen and dejn'aved humanity. 
(Dan. vii, 2, 3; Isa. Ivii, 20; Rev. xiii, 1; xvii, 15.) 
Hence, of the new heavens and new earth which are re- 
vealed as the inheritance of God's people, it is said, "And 
there shall be no more sea." — Rev. xxi, 1. 



32 BAPTISM AT SINAI. [Part I. 

The particular source of this figure seems to have been 
that accursed sea of Sodom, which was more impressively 
familiar to Israel thai! auy other body of salt water, and 
which has acquired in modern times the appropriate name 
of the Dead Sea — a name expressive of the fact that its 
waters destroy alike vegetation on its banks and animal 
life in its bosom. Its peculiar and instructive position in 
the figurative system of the Scriptures appears in the 
prophecy of Ezekiel (xlvii, 8, 9-11), where the river of 
Hving water from the temple is described as flowing east- 
Ward to the sea ; and being brought forth into the sea, the 
salt waters are healed, so that "there shall be abundance 
<ff fish." 

Contrasted with this figure of sea water is that of liv- 
ing water, that is, the fresh water of rain and of fountains 
and streams. It is the ordinary symbol of the Holy Spirit. 
(John vii, 37-39.) The reason is, that, as this water is 
the cause of life and growth to the creation, animal and 
vegetable, so, the Spirit is the alone source of spiritual life 
and growth. The primeval type of that blessed Agent was 
the river that watered the Garden of Eden, and thence 
fliowing, was parted into four streams to water the earth. 
This river was a fitting symbol of the Holy Spirit, " which 
proceedeth from the Father," the " pure river of water of 
life clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God 
and of the Lamb" (John xv, 26 ; Rev. xxii, 1), not only in 
its life-giving virtue, but in its abundance and diffiision. But 
the fall cut man ofl" from its abundant and perennial 
stream, and thenceforth the figirre, as traceable through 
the Scriptures, ever looks forward to that promised time 
when the ruin of the fall will be repaired, and the gates 
of Paradise thrown open again. In the last chapters of 
the Revelation, that day is revealed in a vision of glory. 
There is no more sea ; but the river of life pours its exhaust- 
less crystal waters through the restored Eden of God. But 
the garden is no longer the retired home of one human 



Sec. VI.] THE LIVING WATER. 83 

pair, but is built up, a great city, with walls of gems and 
streets of gold and gates of pearl and the light of the glory 
of God. And the nations of them that are saved do walk 
in the light of it. But still it is identified as the same of 
old, by the flowing river and the tree of life in the midst 
on its banks. (Kev. ii, 7 ; xxii, 1,2; and compare Psalms 
xlvi,4; xxiii, 2; John iv, 10, 14; vii, 38, 39; Zech. xiv. 
S. ) In Ezekiel (xlvii, 1-12) there appears a vision of this 
river as a prophecy of God's grace in store for the last 
times for Israel and the world. lu it, the attention of the 
prophet and of the reader is called distinctly to several 
points, all of which bear directly on our present inquiry : 

1. The source of the waters. In the Kevelation, it is 
described as proceeding out of the throne of God and the 
Lamb. In Ezekiel the same idea is presented under the 
figure of the temple, God's dwelling-place. The waters 
issue out from under the threshold of the house **at the 
south side of the altar" — the altar where the sprinkled 
blood and burning sacrifices testified to the Person by 
whom, and the price at which, the Spirit is sent. (Com- 
pare John vii, 39 ; xvi, 7 ; Acts ii, 33.) 

2. The exhaustless and increasing flow of the waters is 
shown to the prophet, who, at a thousand cubits from their 
source, is led through them, — a stream ankle deep. A 
thousand cubits farther, he passed through, and they had 
risen to his knees. Again, a thousand cubits, and the 
waters were to his loins ; and at a thousand cubits more it 
was a river that he could not pass over. "And he said 
unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen this?" 

3. The river was a fountain of life. On its banks were 
*' very many trees," " all trees for meat," with fadeless leaf 
and exhaustless fruit, " the fruit thereof for meat, and the 
leaf thereof for medicine." "And there shall be a very 
great multitude offish" in the Dead Sea, "because these 
waters shall come thither." For " it shall come to pass 
that every thing that liveth which moveth, whithersoever 



34 BAPTISM AT SINAI. [Part I. 

the river shall come shall live. Every thing shall live, 
"whither the river cometh." 

4. By these living waters, the Dead Sea of dej^raved 
humanity shall be healed. ' ' Now this sea of Sodom," 
says Thompson, "is so intolerably bitter, that, although 
the Jordan, the Arnon, and many other streams have been 
pouring into it their vast contributions of sweet water for 
thousands of years, it continues as nauseous and deadly a^ 
ever. Nothing lives in it; neither fish nor reptiles nor 
even animalculae can abide its desperate malignity. But 
these waters from the sanctuary heal it. The w^hole 
world affords no other type of human apostasy so appro- 
priate, so significant. Think of it! There it lies in its 
sulphurous sepulcher, thirteen hundred feet below the 
ocean, steaming up like a huge caldron of smouldering bi- 
tumen and brimstone! Neither rain from heaven nor 
mountain torrents nor Jordan's flood, nor all combined can 
change its character of utter death. Fit symbol of that 
great dead sea of depravity and corruption which nothing 
human can heal!"* But the pure w^aters of the river of 
life will yet pour into this sea of death a tide of grace by 
which "the waters shall be healed." — Ezek. xxvii, 8. 

In the prophecy of Joel (iii, 18,) there is another allu- 
sion to these waters. Again, in Zechariah a modified form 
of the same vision appears. " It shall be in that day that 
living waters shall go out from Jerusalem ; half of them 
toward the former" (the Eastern or Dead) " sea, and half 
of them toward the hinder sea" (the Mediterranean). "In 
summer and winter shall it be ;" not a mere winter torrent, 
as are most of the streams of Palestine, but an unfailing 
river. (Zech. xiv, 8.) 

Such is the type of the Spirit, as his graces flowed in 
Eden, and shall be given to the world, in the times of 
restitution. But, for the present times, the symbols of rain 
and fountains of springing water are used in the Scriptures 

* " The Land and the B)ok." Vol. II, pp. 531, 534. 



Sec. VI.] ' THE LIVING WylTER. 35 

as tlie appropriate types of the now limited and unequal 
measure and distribution of the Spirit. The manner and 
effects of his agency are set forth under three forms, each 
having its own significance : 

1. Inasmuch as the rains of heaven are the great source 
of life and refreshment to the earth and vegetation, the 
coming of the Spirit and his efficiency as a life-giving and 
sanctifying power sent down from heaven are expressed by 
water, shed down, poured, or sprinkled, as the rain de- 
scends. Says God to Israel: " I will pour water upon him 
that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground ; I will pour 
my Spirit upon thy seed and my blessing upon thine off- 
spring." — Isa. xliv, 3. The Psalmist says of the graces of 
the Spirit to be bestowed by Messiah, " He shall come 
down like rain upon the mown grass" (the stubble, after 
mowing) " as showers that water the earth." — Psalm 
Ixxii, 6. Of this we shall see more hereafter. 

2. The act of faith by which the believer seeks and re- 
ceives more and more of the indwelling Spirit is symbol- 
ized by thirsting and drinking of living water. " Ho, every 
one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters." — ^Isa. Iv, 1. 
" If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. . . . 
This he spake of the Spirit which they that believe on him 
should receive." — John vii, 37-39. "Let him that is 
athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water 
of life freely." — ^Rev. xxii, 17. The intimate relation which 
this figure sustains, responsive to the one preceding, is 
illustrated by the expression wherein God describes the 
land of promise : ''A land of hills and valleys, and drinh- 
eth water of the rain of heaven. A land which the Lord 
thy God careth for." — Deut. xi, 11, 12. With this, com- 
pare the language of Paul: "The earth which drinheth in 
the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs 
meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing 
of God ; but that which beareth thorns and briars is re- 
jected and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be 



86 BAPTISM AT SIXAI. [Part I. 

biirued. But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of 
you." — Heb. vi, 7-9. The figure is further illustrated iu 
the sublime description given by Ezekiel of the destruction 
of Assyria, in which he speaks of " the trees of Eden, the 
choice and best of Lebanon, all that drhik water ^^ and so 
grow and flourish. (Ezek. xxxi, 16.) 

3. The duty of the penitent to yield himself with dili- 
gent obedience to the sanctifying power and grace of the. 
Holy Spirit, to put away sin and follow after holiness, is 
enjoined under the figure of washing himself with water. 
"Wash ye; make you clean; put away the evil of your 
doings from before mine eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn to 
to well." — Isa. i, 16, 17. "O Jerusalem, wash thine heart 
from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved." — Jer. iv, 14. 
So, James cries, "Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and 
purify your hearts, ye double-minded." — Jas. iv, 8. In 
the rite of self-washing, to which these last passages refer, 
the pure w^ater still symbolized the Holy Spirit given by 
Jesus Christ; whilst the washing expressed the privilege 
and duty of God's people conforming their lives to the law 
of holiness, and exercising the graces which the Spirit 
gives. 



Skc. VII. 1 THE ABRAIIAMIC COVENANT. 37 



Part II. 

THE VISIBLE CHURCH. 

Section VII. — The Abrahamic Covenant. 

THE interest attaching to the Sinai baptism is greatly 
enhanced by its immediate and intimate relation to 
us. The covenant then sealed is the fundamental and per- 
petual charter of the visible church. The transaction by 
which it was established was the inauguration of that 
church. It was the espousal of the bride of Christ, whose 
betrothal took place in the covenant with Abraham. So it 
is expressly and repeatedly stated by the Spirit of God in 
the prophets. (See Jer. ii, 1, 2; Ezck. xvi, 3-14; xxiii ; 
PIos. ii, 2, 15, 16.) It is true that this is controverted. 
It is asserted that the relations established by the covenants 
between God and Israel were secular and political, not 
spiritual ; that the blessings therein secured were temj^oral ; 
that they conveyed nothing but a guarantee that Israel 
should become a numerous and powerful nation, that God 
would be their political king, the Head of their common- 
wealth, and that the laud of Palestine should be their 
possession and home. IIow utterly at variance with the 
teachings of God's AYord are these assertions a brief anal- 
ysis of the record will prove. 

The covenant of Sinai was the culmination of a series 
of transactions which began with the calling of Abram 
from Ur of the Chaldces. ' ' The Lord had said unto Abram, 
Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred and 
from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee ; 
and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless 
thee and make thy name great ; and thou shalt be a 



38 THE VISIBLE CHURCH. [Part II. 

blessing; and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse 
him that curse th thee ; and in thee shall all families of 
the earth be blessed." — Gen. xii, 1-3. Respecting this 
record, the following points are made clear in the New 
Testament: (1) That under the type of Canaan, "the 
land that I will show thee," heaven was the ultimate in- 
heritance offered to Abram ; and that it was so understood 
by him and the patriarchs. (Gal. iv, 26 ; Heb. xi, 10, 
14-16.) (2) That the blessings promised through him to 
all the families of the earth were the atonement and sal- 
vation of Jesus Christ ; and that this also was so under- 
stood by Abram. (Gen. xvii, 7 ; Gal. iii, 16 , John viii, 
56.) Thus, in his call from Chaldea, and the promises 
annexed to it, God "preached before the gospel unto 
Abraham." — Gal. iii, 8. So far, certainly, the transaction 
is eminently spiritual. "^ 

About ten years after the coming of Abram into the 
land of Canaan, the promises were confirmed to him by 
being incorporated into covenant form, and ratified by a 
seal. Respecting this first covenant, the record of which 
is contained in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, the fol- 
lowing are the essential points : 

1. The interview was opened by the Lord with an 
assurance so spiritual and large as to be exhaustive of 
every thing that heaven can bestow. "The Lord came 
unto Abram in a vision, saying. Fear not, Abram ; I am 
thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward." Whatever 
else was promised or given, after an assurance thus rich 
and comprehensive of time and eternity, must evidently 
be interpreted in a sense subordinate to it. No minor 
particulars can ever exhaust or limit the treasury thus 
opened. Henceforth God himself belongs to the jDatriarch. 

2. An innumerable seed was assured to him, as heirs 
with him of the promises ; and he is told that not to him 
but to his seed should the earthly Canaan be given. (Vs. 
5, 18 ; and compare xvii, 7, 8.) 



Sec. V:I.] THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT. 39 

3. Abram's faith was the conditiou of the covenant. 
" He beUeved in the Lord, and he counted it to him for 
righteousness. "--Vs. 6. 

4. The promises thus made and accepted were con- 
firmed by a sacrifice appointed of God, and his acceptance 
of it was manifested by the sign of a smoking furnace and 
a burning lamp, passing between the pieces. (Vs. 8, 9, 
17, 18.) 

5. It was an express provision of the covenant thus 
ratified that, so far as it concerned the seed of Abram, its 
reahzation was to be held in abeyance four hundred years. 
(Vs. 13-16.) It was the betrothal, of which the marriage 
consummation could only take place Avhen the long-suffer- 
ing of God toward the nations was exhausted and the in- 
iquity of the Amorites was full. 

About fifteen years afterward God was pleased to ap- 
pear again to the patriarch, to renew the covenant, and to 
confirm it with a new seal. (Gen. xvii, 1-21.) Of this 
edition of the covenant the principal provisions were: 
(1) That he should be a father of many nations. (2) 
That Canaan should be, to him and his seed, an everlast- 
ing possession. (3) That God would be a God to him 
and to his seed after him. By the first of these prom- 
ises, as Paul assures us, Abraham was made the heir of 
the world, and the father of all believers ; of the gospel 
day, as well as before it; of the Gentile nations, as 
well as of Israel. (Rom. iv, 11-18 ; Gal. iii, 7-9, 14.) 
Hence the name given him of God, in confirmation of 
this promise (Gen. xvii, 5), Abraham, "Father of a 
multitude," Father of the church of Christ. But the cen- 
tral fact of this transaction remains. The covenant was 
epitomized in one brief word: "I will establish my cove- 
nant between me and thee and thy seed after thee, in their 
generations, for an everlasting covenant, to he a God unto 
thee and to thy seed after tJiee." — v. 7. 



40 ■ THE VISIBLE CHURCH. [Part II. 

1. The covenant thus set forth is "an everlasting cov- 
enant ;" no laj^se of time can alter or abrogate its terms. 

2. By it the Godhead assumed toward Abraham and 
his seed relations peculiar, exclusive, and of boundless 
grace. God, even the infinite and almighty God, can do 
no more than to give himself. Christian can conceive no 
more, and the most blessed of all heaven's ransomed host 
will know and enjoy no more than this, which was first 
assured to Abram, in those words, "Fear not; I am thy 
shield, and thy exceeding great reward;" and is now con- 
centrated into that one word, " Thxj God." What can 
there be, not spiritual, in a covenant thus summed? And 
what spiritual gift or blessing is not comprehended in it ? 
But this is no4 all. Whilst Paul testifies that all who be- 
lieve are the seed of Abraham, and heirs with him of the 
promises, he also declares that Christ was the seed to whom 
distinctively and on behalf of his people they were ad- 
dressed : "To Abraham and his seed w^ere the promises 
made. He saith not, And to seeds as of many, but as of 
one : And to thy seed, which is Christ." — Gal. iii, 16. It 
thus appears that the promises in question were addressed 
immediately to the Lord Jesus, and they indicate all the 
intimacy and grace of his relation to the Father, — the re- 
lation which he claimed, when, from the cross, he appealed 
to the Father by that title: "J% ^^^- "^2/ G^^^-^- ^^'^y hast 
thou forsaken me ?" It follows, that the title of others to 
this promise is mediate only: "As many of you as have 
been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. . . . And 
if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs 
according to the promise." — ^Ib. 27-29. 

It w^as with a view to this relation of the covenant to 
the Lord Jesus, that circumcision was appointed as a seal 
of it. In that rite was signified satisfaction to justice 
through the blood of the promised Seed, and the crucify- 
ing of our old man with him, to the putting off and de- 



Skc. VII.] THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT. 41 

stroying of the body of the flesh. (Dent, x, 16 ; Jer. iv, 
4; Rom. vi, 6; Col ii, 11, 12.) 

Upon occasion of the ojSering of Isaac, the covenant 
was again confirmed to Abraham in promises -svhich do not 
mention Canaan, but are summed in the intensive assur- 
ances: "In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying 
I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the 
sand which is upon the sea-shore, and thy seed shall possess 
the gate of his enemies, and in thy seed shall all the nations 
of the earth be blessed." — Gen. xxii, lG-18. What seed 
it was to whom these promises were made, we have seen 
before. The assurance to him of triumph over his ene- 
mies renews the pledge made to Eve, through the curse 
upon the serpent, "Her seed shall bruise thy head." — 
Gen. iii, 15. Of the same thing, the Spirit in Isaiah says; 
" Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and 
he shall divide the spoil with the strong ; because he hath 
poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with 
the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many and made 
intercession for the transgressors." — Isa. liii, 12. Of it, 
Paul says i*^' He must reign, till he hath put all enemies 
under his feet." — 1 Cor. xv, 25. 

The covenant thus interj)reted, was confirmed to Abra- 
ham with an oath (v. 16), of which Paul says: "Wherein 
God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of 
promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by 
an oath ; that, by two immutable things, in which it was 
im^wssible for God to lie, we might have a strong consola- 
tion who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope 
set before us. Which hope we have as an anchor of the 
soul both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that 
within the veil, whither the forerunner is for us entered, 
even Jesus." — Heb. vi, 17-20. Here, again, it ap])ears 
that the covenant with Abraham comprehended in its 
terms the very highest hopes which Christ's blood has pur- 
chased, — which he, in heaven, as his [)eople's forerunner, 

4 



42 THE VISIBLE CHURCH. [Part II. 

uow possesses, and which with him they shall finally share ; 
and that the oath by which it was confirmed contemplated 
these very things, and was designed to perfect the faith 
and confidence of his people, in the gospel day, as well as 
of the patriarchs and saints of old. 

It is thus manifest that while the Abrahamic covenant 
did undoubtedly convey to Abraham and his seed after the 
flesh many and precious temporal blessings, it was at the 
same time an embodiment of the very terms of the cove- 
nant between God and his Christ; that its provisions of 
grace to man are bestowed wholly in Christ ; and that it 
is, therefore, exclusive and everlasting. There can be no 
reconciliation between God and man, but upon the terms 
of this covenant. There can, therefore, be no people of 
God, no true church of Christ, but of those who accept 
and are embraced in, and built upon, that alone founda- 
tion, "the everlasting covenant" made with Abraham. 

Section VIII. — Tlie Conditions of the Sinai Covenant. 

At length, the four hundred years were past. The pro- 
bation of the apostate nations was finished. The iniquity 
of the Amorites was full. God remembered his covenant 
with Abraham, and sent Moses into Egypt, saying to him: 
"I am Jehovah. And I appeared unto Abraham, unto 
Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty ; but 
by my name, Jehovah, was I not known to them. And I 
have also established my covenant with them, to give them 
the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein 
they were strangers. And I have also heard the groaning 
of the children of Israel, Avhom the Egyptians keep in 
bondage, and I have remembered my covenant. "Where- 
fore, say unto the children of Israel, I am the Lord, and I 
will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyp- 
tians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will 
redeem you with a stretched out arm and with great judg- 
ments ; and I will take you to me for a people, and I will 



Sec. VIII.] CONDITIONS OF SINAI COVENANT. 43 

be to you a God ; and ye shall know that I am the Lord 
your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens 
of the Egyptians. And I ^vill bring you in unto the land, 
concerning which 1 did swear to give it to Abraham, to 
Isaac, and to Jacob." — Ex. vi, 2-8. In this initial com- 
munication we have the key to the Sinai covenant, and to 
all God's subsequent dealings with Israel. In it three 
things are specially observable. ( !• ) The Abrahamic 
covenant is designated, "my covenant," in accordance with 
W'hat we have already seen as to the nature of that cove- 
nant, as exclusive and everlasting. (2.) Its scope is stated 
in those all-embracing terms, "I will take you to me for a 
people, and I w^ill be to you a God." (3.) The possession 
of the earthly Canaan is specified as a minor particular, 
under this comprehensive pledge. 

With all this the Sinai covenant was in accord. Its 
conditional terms we have seen, as propounded through 
Moses. " Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and 
tell the children of Israel : Ye have seen what I did 
to the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, 
and brought you^ unto myself Now, therefore, ij ye ivill 
obeij my voice indeed, and keep my covenant." — Ex. xix, 3-5. 
The " voice" which they were to obey they heard on the 
next day, when God spake to them the words of the law, 
from the midst of the smoke and flame. Of it Moses 
afterward reminded the people : " Ye cam'e near and stood 
under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire 
unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick 
darkness. And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst 
of the fire : ye heard the voice of the w^ords, but saw no 
similitude, only a voice. And he declared unto you his 
covenant which he commanded you to perform, even ten 
commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of 
stone."— Dent, iv, 11-13. Very great emphasis attaches 
to the Ton Commandments, in their relation as thus the 
fundamental law of tlie covenant. Tlie first overture hav- 



44 THE VISIBLE CHURCH. [Part II. 

ing been addressed to Israel, in the terms, *'If ye will 
obey my voice," and by them accepted, the next day that 
voice was heard uttering those commandments. Again 
the people are called upon, and again respond in pledge 
of obedience. Moses then wrote in " the book of the cov- 
enant" all these words of the Lord, and read them in the 
audience of the people. And it was not till again they 
promised obedience to the terms thus set before them that 
the covenant was ratified, as we have seen. The Ten 
Commandments were then, by the finger of God, engraved 
on the two tables of stone, which were thence known as 
'' the tables of the covenant." These were placed in " the 
ark of the covenant," which was in the holy of holies, in 
"the tabernacle of the covenant." Both of these derived 
their names and significance from these tables, which were 
the very center of the Avhole system of religion and wor- 
ship connected with the tabernacle. The lid of the ark 
which covered these tables was the golden mercy-seat, with 
its cherubim of gold, between which stood the pillar of 
glory, the Shechinah, overshadowing the mercy-seat. It 
thus typified God's throne of grace immovably based upon 
the firm foundation of his eternal law — mercy to man ouly 
possible on condition of satisfaction to that law. There- 
fore, when remembrance of sins was made every 3'ear 
(Heb. X, 3), it was by the sprinkling of blood upon the 
mercy-seat and tlie ark of the covenant. (lb. ix, 7.) A 
proper regard to the fact that the moral law was thus the 
fundamental condition of the covenant, while the ritual 
law was no part of it, but a later system of testimony, 
would have prevented much perplexing and erroneous 
speculation on the subject. 

But the covenant had a second condition, " If ye will 
fceep my covenant." This second clause is implied in the 
first. But it is none the less important and significant, as 
being a categorical statement of the nature of the obedi- 
ence required. AVe have already pointed out the fact that 



Sec. IX.] PROMISES OF SINAI COVENANT. 45 

by '' m\j covenant" was meant the covenant with Abraham, 
so interpreted by God himself in his first communication 
to Israel in Egypt. The covenant thus defined bad but one 
condition and two promises. The promises were, to bring 
tliem out of the bondage of Egypt and give them the 
land of Canaan, and to be to them a God. The condition 
was, that Israel, in turn, would surrender themselves to 
be for a people to God. (Ex. vi, 7.) This condition is 
the only thing that can be meant by the phrase, '' If ^e 
will keep my covenant." It was the only duty laid upon 
them by that covenant. We thus find the tw^o funda- 
mental conditions of the Sinai covenant to have been in 
the terms, ''If ye will obey my voice indeed" — the voice 
that spake in the Ten Commandments — and, "If ye will 
keep my covenant," to be a willing people unto me, and 
cleave to me as your God. Such was the foundation-stone 
on which the church was built. 

Section IX. — The Promises of the Sinai Covenant. 

As were the conditions of the covenant, so w^re its 
promises altogether and eminently spiritual. 

1. "Ye shall be unto me a peculiar treasure above all 
people ; for all the earth is mine." A treasure is a prop- 
erty, valuable, highly prized, and cherished. It is riches 
to the owner ; his enjoyments largely depend thereon ; 
and over it he therefore exercises a watchful guardianship. 
Such was the relation which, by the covenant, God con- 
ferred on Israel. The expression is strengthened by the 
qualifying adjective, " peculiar," which means, special and 
exclusive. "My own special treasure." What was thus 
implied may be gathered from a single Scripture. Says 
the Lord, by Malachi : "Then they that feared the Lord 
spake often one to another, and the Lord liearkened and 
hoard it, and a book of remembrance was written before 
him for them that feared the Lord, and that thouglit upon 
his' name. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of 



46 THE VISIBLE CHURCH. [Part II. 

hosts, iu that day when I make up my jewels" ("my pe- 
ciih'ar treasures." The word in the original is the same), 
"and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son 
that serveth him. Then shall ye return and discern be- 
tween the righteous and the wicked ; between him that 
serveth God, and him that serveth him not." — Mai. iii. 
16-18. By this clause, Israel became the object of God's 
assiduous watchfulness and constant care as his own pe- 
culiar treasure of price. 

2. The parenthetic clause, " For all the earth is 
mine," is of singular interest. The covenant with Abra- 
ham conveyed the assurance that in him should * ' all the 
families of the earth be blessed." The clause inserted in 
the Sinai overture was a reminder to Israel of that fact, 
to certify them and the world that the purpose concerning 
the latter was unchanged, that the peculiar relation now 
assumed toward Israel w^as not incongruous to it; that, on 
the contrary, whilst Israel was first, it was not alone in 
the obligations and promises of the covenant. "All the 
earth is mine;" and the claim which, in such a transac- 
tion, God thus makes he will surely vindicate, in his own 
good time, by taking his own to himself, bringing them, 
also, within the pale of his covenant, and gathering from 
them a revenue of praise and glory. 

3. "A kingdom of priests." Israel's acceptance of the 
first condition of the covenant, " If ye will obey my voice," 
erected them into a kingdom, of which God was the alone 
sovereign, — the kingdom of God. This promise defines the 
character and function of that kingdom, — "a kingdom of 
priests;" or, rather, "a priest-kingdom." Israel was thus 
ordained to the exalted ofiice of intercessory mediation for 
the world, and of testimony to it on God's behalf. Had 
ten righteous men been found in the cities of the plain, 
they would have been spared, for the sake of those ten. 
(Gen. xviii, 32.) The angels of destruction could do noth- 
ing to Sodom until Lot departed out of it. (lb. xix, 22.) 



Skc. IX.] PROMISES OF SINAI COVENANT. 47 

Hud one righteous man been found in Jerusalem in the 
days of Jeremiah, the city would have been spared for the 
sake of that one. (Jer. v, 1.) Aaron the priest, with his 
golden censer — a type of the prayers of the saints (Eev. 
V, 8 ; viii, 3) — standing between the living and the dead, 
stayed the plague in the camp of Israel. (Num. xvi, 46-48.) 
So, Israel itself was now ordained a mediatiug priest, to 
stand for the time then present, betAveen the living and 
the dead of the nations, in the ordinances at the sanctu- 
ary, uplifting a censer of intercession which stayed the 
sword of justice that was ready to destroy them; and ap- 
pointed to become at length the agent of the world's salva- 
tion, through atonement made by one of their nation, and 
the gospel sent forth from Jerusalem to all the world, by 
the preaching of Israel's sons. Thus was it a priest-king- 
dom, set apart and sanctified of God, to be for salvation to 
all the ends of the earth. 

This priestly consecration of Israel, moreover, consti- 
tuted her a witness on behalf of God among the nations. 
It was the lighting of a lamp to shine amid the darkness 
of the world. The office to which she Avas thus ordained 
was not yet aggressive ; for the times of the Gentiles Avere 
not come. Yet was hers none the less a public and active 
testimony, Avhich, if they Avould, the Gentiles could hear, 
a gospel light which did, in fact, penetrate far into the 
darkness, and prepared the nations for the coming of 
Christ and the gospel day. For the time being, it Avas 
the office of Israel to cherish the light, by keeping the 
oracles and maintaining the ordinances of God's Avorship, 
and transmitting them to their children, until the fullness 
of time. 

4. '' A holy nation." The Avord '' holy" primarily desig- 
nates the completeness and symmetry of tlie moral perfec- 
tu)ns of God. From hence, it is transferred to those attri- 
butes in the intelligent creatures Avhich are in the likeness 
of God's hoHness. And, as the distinguishing characteristic 



48 THE VISIBLE CHURCH. [Part II. 

of holiness in a creature is surrender and consecration to 
God, the word is used to designate all such things as are 
his by pecuhar dedication to his service. Thus, the altar, 
the tabernacle, and all the vessels and things pertaining 
thereto, were holy. So the tithe of the land, of the flocks, 
and of the herds, was holy ; and the firstborn of men and 
of beasts. (Lev. xxvii, 30, 32 ; Luke ii, 23.) In this 
sense of accepted consecration, and of appropriation to him- 
self, God here puts upon Israel the designation of " a holy 
nation." Henceforth, they w^ere so named, and the obliga- 
tion implied therein constantly insisted upon, as demand- 
ing from them real separation to God, and holiness of 
heart and life. Says the Lord: "Ye shall be holy men 
unto me, neither shall ye eat any flesh that is torn of 
beasts in the field." — Ex. xxii, 31. Moses exhorts them 
to abhor and destroy the idols of the laud, " For thou art 
a holy people unto the Lord thy God ; the Lord thy God 
hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above 
all people that are upon the face of the earth. . . . Thou 
shalt, therefore, keep the commandments and the statutes 
aud the judgmeuts which I command thee this day to do 
them."— Deut. vii, 6-11. From this article of the cove- 
nant, the New Testament designation of the members of 
the visible church is derived. Says Peter, "Ye are a 
chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a )iol\j nation, a pecu- 
har people." — 1 Peter, ii, 9. Hence, the name of "saints," 
or, "holy ones," which, familiar in the Psalms, is con- 
stantly used in the epistles, as the distinctive title of the 
members of the New Testament Church. 

Thus it appears that in all the provisions of the cove- 
nant earthly and temporal blessings are not once alluded 
to. That clause of the Abrahamic covenant which con- 
cerned the possession of Canaan was, indeed, referred to at 
Sinai, and Israel was assured of its fulfillment. (Ex. xxiii, 
23.) But it was then, and ever after, spoken of and 
treated as already and finally settled by the promise made 



S EC . X . ] ITS IN A UGURA TION. 4^ 

to Abraham, (Ex. vi, 3-8; Deut. vii, 7-9; ix, 5, 6; 
Psalm cv, 8-11.) Moreover, the bestowal of Canaan was 
in no sense a secular transaction. Not only as a type of 
the better country was it designed and calculated to awaken 
and stimulate heavenly aspirations. (Heb. xi, 8-16.) But, 
like the fastnesses of the Alps, for centuries the retreat 
and home of the gospel among the martyr Waldenses, Ca- 
naan, planted in the very center of the old world-empires, 
and upon the mid line of march of the world's great history, 
was chosen and prepared of God as a fortress of security 
entrenched for Israel's protection, in the midst of the apos- 
tate and hostile nations, while tending and nourishing the 
beacon fire of gospel light w^hich glow^ed on Mount Zion, 
and shed its beams afar into the gloom of thick darkness 
which enshrouded the world. As such, it was assured to 
Abraham's seed by the covenant with him and the seal 
set in their flesh. 

Section X. — Tlie Visible Church was thus established. 

The Sinai covenant gave origin to the visible church 
of God. By the visible church, I mean that society among 
men which God has called and taken into covenant and 
communion with himself, and ordained to be his witness to 
the world. Two points are essentially involved in the 
definition. The first is the relation to God established by 
the terras — " I will take you to me for a people; and I 
will be to you a God." The second is the office to which 
the church is thus called and ordained, to be God's wit- 
ness, testifying on his behalf against the world's apostasy. 
Such is Peter's declaration, quoting the terms of the Sinai 
covenant, and applying them to the New Testament 
church: "Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, 
a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shoiv forth 
the praiseji of him who hath called you out of darkness into 
his marvelous light; which in time past were not a people, 
but are now the people of God.'' — 1 Peter ii, 9, 10. This 



50 THE VISIBLE CHURCH. [Part II. 

privilege of communion, and this office of testimony were 
implied and involved in the whole covenant, and all its 
terms; but especially indicated by that expression, '* Ye 
shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation." 
It is the privilege of priests to draw nigh to God, and their 
office to testify on God's behalf to men. 

The manner and meaning of the designation by which, 
throughout the Greek Scriptures of the Old Testament and 
of the New, the body thus constituted is known as the 
eJcUesia, the church, is worthy of special notice in this con- 
nection. The fact of God having met with Israel at 
Sinai, and communed with them in an audible voice, is 
referred to by. Moses and emphasized as being a signal 
demonstration of relations established of extraordinary in- 
timacy. " What nation is there so great which hath God 
so nigh unto them as the Lord our God in all things that 
we call upon him for ? . . . Take heed to thyself, and keep 
thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine 
eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart, all 
the days of thy life ; but teach them thy sons and thy sons' 
sons, specially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord 
thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, Gather 
me the people together, and I - will make them hear my 
words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that 
they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach 
their children. . . . And the Lord spake unto you out of the 
midst of the fire ; ye heard the voice of the words, but saw 
no similitude ; only ye heard a voice." — Deut. iv, 7-13. 
Again, he says: "Ask now of the days that are past, 
which were before thee, since the day that God created 
man upon the earth, and ask from one side of heaven unto 
the other, whether there hath been any such a thing as 
this great thing is, or hath been heard like it. Did ever 
people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of 
fire, as thou hast heard, and live? Or hath God assayed 
to go and take him a nation from the midst of another 



Skc. X.] ITS INAUGURATION. 51 

nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by 
war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, 
and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord thy 
God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? Unto thee 
it was showed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he 
is God ; there is none else beside him." — lb. iv, 32-35. 

The presence of God with Israel, thus impressively 
manifested, was not casual or transient. The fires and 
the terrors of Sinai were indeed withdrawn. But the 
tabernacle of testimony was erected, and the shechinah 
there revealed for the express purpose of being a testimony 
to Israel that God was with them dwelling in their midst. 
Of the services to be there established, he directed Moses 
that there should be " a continual burnt-offering through- 
out your generations, at the door of the tabernacle of the 
congregation before the Lord, where I will meet you to 
speak there unto thee. And there will I meet with the 
children of Israel, and the tabernacle" (or rather, as the 
margin, "Israel") ''shall be sanctified by my glory. And I 
will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their 
God."— Ex. xxix, 42-46. 

Thus the gathering of Israel at Sinai was not a mere 
congregation or assembling of the people to each other, 
but a meeting with God ; and this fact is very remarkably 
indicated in the Septuagint Greek. In the description of 
the Sinai scene, given in Deut. iv, in that version, the 
tenth verse stands thus: "The day that thou stoodest 
before the Lord thy God in Horeb {il hemera tes eJcklesias), 
in tJw day of the assembly, when the Lord said to me (Ekkle- 
simon pros me), Aasemble to me the people." Previous to 
that occasion the word ekklesia is not found in the Greek 
Scriptures. That day was, by Moses, habitually designated 
"the day of the ekklesia — the assembly" (Deut. ix, 10; x, 
4; xviii, 16), and the reason of the designation is thus, by 
the Greek translators, stamped upon the face of that ver- 
sion. It was so called because the people on that day met 



52 THE VISIBLE CHURCH. [Pakt 1L 

with God, in compliance with the command (Ekkltsiason), 
^^ Assemble to me the people." In accordance with the 
special meaning to which the word was thus appropriated 
it is used throughout the Scriptures. In the Old Testa- 
ment and Apocrypha it occurs nearly one hundred times, 
and a careful examination fails to discover an instance in 
which it i& used otherwise, than to designate Israel in their 
sacred character as the covenant people of God. In that 
sense it passed into the New Testament. In one place it 
is exceptionally used by the town clerk of the Greek city 
of Ephesus, and by Luke, after him, in its classic meaning, 
to designate an assembly of the freemen of the city. (Acts 
xix, 39, 41.) But everywhere else it is employed in the 
same sense as in the Septuagint. It is thus applied 
(1) to Israel in the wilderness (Acts vii, 38), and at the 
temple (Heb. ii, 12); (2) to the rehgious assemblies of the 
Jews during the time of Christ's ministry (Matt, xviii, 17), 
and ever afterwards, in the Acts,Epistles, and Kevelation, to 
the New Testament Church. According, therefore, to the 
uniform usage of the Scriptures, the word is appropriated to 
designate an assembly with God, and, in a secondary sense, 
the people as related to such an assembly. Such is the des- 
ignation given to Israel as the people of God by covenant 
and fellowship, among whom he held the communion of 
mutual converse, he with them in the words of his testi- 
mony and the communications of his grace, and they with 
him in all things in which they called upon him. (Deut. 
iv, 7. Compare Matt, xviii, 20;- Acts x, 33.) In the 
assembly of Israel, the church of the apostles finds an 
origin in no wise unworthy her own lofty character and 
office. Happy she when with conscious experience she can 
take to herself the glad words of Israel's song, ''There is 
a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of 
God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. 
God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved; God 
shall help her, and that right early. . . . The Lord of 



Sbc. X.] ITS INAUGURATION. 53 

hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge." — 
Psahn xlvi, 4-7. 

The followiug ^Yere the essential features of the consti- 
tution of the church thus erected: 

1. Its fundamental charter was the covenant, embrac- 
ing the ten commandments, in the reciprocal terms which 
have been considered in the preceding chapter. 

2. The persons with whom these terms were made, and 
who were comprehended in the society thereupon erected, 
were all those, whether of Israel or the Gentiles, together 
with their households, who made credible profession of 
accepting the covenant, and were thereupon sealed with 
its baptismal seal. To this point we shall presently 
return. 

3. The radical principle of organization was that of 
parental headship and family unity. The family is the 
divine original of all human society, as the parental office 
is of all human authority. Upon this basis was founded 
the Abrahamic covenant, and upon it was erected the sys- 
tem of government for Israel. It was administered by 
the fathers of families, of houses, and of tribes ; the first- 
born son succeeding to his father as head of his house, 
under the designation of elder. This system was recog- 
nized in the first commission of Moses from God, and the 
elders, or heads of houses, were united with him in his 
mission to Pharaoh. (Ex. iii, 16, 18; iv, 29.) To them 
was committed the ordering of the passover on the night 
of the exodus. (lb. xii, 21.) At Sinai, before the giving 
of the covenant, the system was perfected in its details, at 
the suggestion of Jethro, with the sanction of God. (Ex. 
xviii, 12-24.) Immediately upon the sealing of the cove- 
nant seventy of the elders, who had been previously assem- 
bled by the command of God, went up, as already stated, 
with Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, into the mount, 
and there celebrated on Israel's behalf the feast of the 
covenant. "They saw the God of Israel, and did eat and 



54 THE VISIBLE CHURCH. [Paet II. 

drink." — Ex. xxiv, 1, 9-11. Afterward, when the cove- 
nant was renewed in the plains of Moab, the relation of 
the elders thereto, in their official capacity, was expressly 
stated. ''Ye stand this day, all of you, before the Lord 
your God, your captains of your tribes, your elders and 
your officers, with all the men of Israel, your little ones, 
your wives." — Deut. xxix, 10. 

Such were the essential features of the constitution of 
the church, as ordained at Sinai. To her, thus organ- 
ized, were given ordinances of testimony, concerning which 
a few points, only are here necessary. Since she was ap- 
pointed simply to maintain, in her position in the midst 
of the nations, the lamp of gospel truth ever shining, until 
the set time should come for sending it forth through the 
world, the ordinances of testimony w-hich were intrusted 
to her were adapted expressly to this office. They were : 
(1.) The oracles of God, his written word, from time to 
time imparted through Moses and other holy men, who 
spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost. (Rom. iii, 
2; 2 Pet. i, 21.) (2.) The holy convocations of the Sab- 
bath days. (Lev. xxiii, 3 ; 1 Kings iv, 23 ; Acts xv, 21.) 
(3.) The priesthood and ritual service. (4.) The sanctuary 
worship and festivals. (5.) Public professions of faith, oc- 
casional and stated. (Deut. xxvi.) (6.) Poetic recitations 
and psalmody. (Ex. xv, 1-21 ; Deut. xxxi, xxxii ; the 
book of Psalms.) 

It was with a special view to the witnessing office of 
the church of Israel that the ritual system was constructed. 
The covenant and the ritual w^ere testimonies to the better 
covenant and the heavenly realities which belong to it. It 
is with this view that the word "testimony" is so much 
used in designating them. Thus the Ten Commandments, 
the fundamental law of the covenant, were frequently 
designated "the testimony." (Ex. xxv, 21.) The tables 
on w^hich they were written were, in like manner, "the 
tables of the testimony." They Avere kept in " the ark of 



S KC . X . ] ITS IN A UG URA TION. 55 

the testimoDy," which was iu " the tabernacle of the testi- 
mouy." In the same way the whole system of ordinances 
and laws given to Israel is designated "the testimonies of 
God." Of them, and the office of the church concerning 
them, the Psalmist says: "He established a testimony in 
Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded 
our fathers, that they should make them known to their 
children, that the generation to come might know them : 
even the children which should be born ; who should arise 
and declare them to their children ; that they might set 
their hope in God, and not forget his works, but keep his 
commandments." — Psalm Ixxviii, 5-7. 

Respecting the ritual system, there are two propositions 
which are believed to be demonstrable, but are here pre- 
sented without argument. The jird is, that these rites 
were not dark forms, veiling rather than disclosing a new 
revelation; but were inscriptions in luminous characters, 
setting forth the doctrines of a faith w^ell understood by 
the patriarchs and fathers from the beginning, and from 
them transmitted and known to Israel. Second. The ritual 
forms in which the gospel was clothed in the Levitical 
system were far more suitable for the purposes of popular 
instruction and world-wide dissemination than would have 
been any conceivable exposition of it in writing. The art 
of writing was in its infancy. A written gospel would 
have been, even to Israel, a sealed book; how much more 
to all other people! The history and laws were put in 
writing and kept at the sanctuary for the direction of the 
priests and magistrates in the performance of their duties, 
the administration of justice, and the instruction of Israel. 
But the gospel, for the people, was clothed in forms which 
required no interpreter, which meant the same in every 
language under heaven, and which were calculated, by 
their appeals to the imagination through the eye and the 
senses, to stamp themselves indelibly upon the memory and 
the affections. Thus were they eminently adapted to arrest 



56 THE VISIBLE CHURCH. [Part II. 

the attention and impress the minds of strangers, and of 
the young, for whom especially they were designed. (Ex. 
xii, 26; xiii, 14; Deut. vi, 20; Josh, iv, 6, 21; 1 Kings 
viii, 41, 42.) 

The fact is of an importance which entitles it to dis- 
tinct and emphatic mention, that the Aaronic priesthood 
and the ritual law were no part of the constitution of the 
church, as it was established by the covenant. They were 
not in existence when the covenant was made, but were 
ordinances afterward given to the church, as already ex- 
istent and organized. They w^ere bestowed as means of 
fulfilling her witnessing office, means adapted to the times 
and circumstances of Israel, but subject to be modified, as 
they were in the temple system, or to be wholly suspended 
or set aside, without impairing the constitution of the 
church or the completeness and efficiency of its organiza- 
tion. Not only thus did the covenant precede the ritual 
law and the priesthood, but when, forty years afterward, 
the covenant was renewed, and the parties to it were enu- 
merated in detail, the priests were altogether ignored. 
(Deut. xxix, 10-12.) They were in no wise essential to it. 

Section XI. — T}ie Terms of Membershij^ in the Church of 
Israel. 

With some slight circumstantial differences, having ref- 
erence to the difference in the office of the church under 
the two disj^ensations, the conditions of membership were 
essentially the same as propounded at Sinai and as pre- 
scribed under the gospel. While the spiritual blessings 
of the covenant were from the beginning conditioned upon 
true faith and loving obedience, the privilege of member- 
ship in the visible church was at Sinai bestowed upon 
those, with their households, who made credible profession 
of these graces, and upon them only. On " the day of 
the assembly," all the people professed to take God for 
their God, and to devote themselves to him as his believing 



Sec. XL] TERMS OF MEMBERSHIP. hi 

and obedient people. And as on the days of Pentecost, 
so on this occasion, the profession was accepted, and tlieir 
admission was sealed with baptism ; although doubtless, in 
both cases, there were false professors included with the 
true. AVith certain exceptions, ordained for special reasons 
(Deut. xxiii, 1-8), the conditions of membership were the 
same for the Gentile world as for Israel. The law was 
explicit and most emphatic on this point. "One ordinance 
shall be both for you of the congregation and also for the 
stranger that sojourneth with you, an ordinance forever in 
your generations : as ye are, so shall the stranger be before 
the Lord. One law and one manner shall be for you and 
for the stranger that sojourneth with you." — Num. xv, 14- 
16, and 29 ; and see ix, 14 ; xix, 10 ; Ex. xii, 43-49 ; 
Deut. xxxi, 12 ; Josh, viii, 33, etc. 

For eliminating unworthy members, the means provided 
in the Sinai ordinances were as abundant as those now en- 
joyed by the church, and would seem to have been as 
well adapted to the effectual securing of the end proposed. 
They come under three heads. (1.) Certain offenses were 
visited with the penalty of death or of utter separation 
from the communion of Israel. (Ex. xxxi, 14; Num. ix, 
13, etc.) (2.) The expenses incident to a faithful perform- 
ance of the duties required of members of the church of 
Israel were large and continual. Firstfruits, firstlings, and 
tithes, trespass offerings, sin offerings, freewill offerings, and 
other oblations, made up an aggregate which can not have 
fallen short of one-fifth of all the income of Israel, and 
probably went far beyond that amount. . The law pro- 
vided none but moral means for enforcing these require- 
ments ; and numerous facts in the history of Israel show 
tliat by many they were entirely neglected. (Neh. xiii, 
10-13; Mai. iii, 8-10.) Those who thus withheld what 
belonged to the Lord were self-excluded from the fellow- 
ship of the covenant society, and were "cut off from the 
congregation (ekkltsia from tJie church) of the Lord." (3.) 



58 THE VISIBLE CHURCH. [Part II. 

The irksome and humiliating nature of the regulations con- 
cerning uncleanness and purifying were very efficient 
means of separating between the believing and the pro- 
fane. As we shall presently see, occasions of uncleanness 
were of almost daily occurrence, in every house. These 
required a conscientious watchfulness and assiduity, in 
guarding against defilement, and in using the appointed 
rites of purifying, which often involved the interruption 
and expense of journeys to the sanctuary and offerings 
there. 

The communion of the church of Israel thus consisted 
of those only, with their families, who added to the obliga- 
tions of a public profession of faith, a fidehty to all the 
requirements of the law, its moral precepts, its ritual ob- 
servances, its tithes and offerings, its rites of purifying and 
its annual feasts. In a word, the account given of Zacha- 
rias and Elizabeth describes the character required, in order 
to fellowship in the church of Israel: " Kighteous before 
God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of 
the Lord blameless." — Luke i, 6. Such, and such only, 
were the ckan, to whom the privileges of Israel's com- 
munion belonged. To them they were certified by the seal 
of baptism. 

Section XII. — Circumcision and Baptism. 

It is commonly assumed that baptism has come into 
the place and office of circumcision. This I conceive to 
be a mistaken view, which involves the whole subject in 
confusion. Circumcision is the distinctive and peculiar seal 
of the Abrahamic covenant. While it is true, that in that 
covenant, as relating to the terms of salvation, all believ- 
ers were accounted as seed of Abraham, and heirs of the 
promises, it is equally true that, by its terms, peculiar 
blessings unspeakably great were assured to the seed of 
the patriarch after the flesh. Not only was Christ to come 
of his flesh ; not only was the church to be for fifteen centu- 



Skc. Xn.] CIRCUMCISION AND BAPTISM. 59 

ries constituted of liis offspriug, but Paul moreover testifies, 
that richer blessings than they have ever yet enjoyed are to 
be bestowed on Israel and on the Gentiles through Israel, 
in the coming future: "If the fall of them be the riches 
of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the 
Gentiles, how much more their fullness? . . . For if the 
casting aw^ay of them be the reconciling of the world, what 
shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?" — 
Rom. xi, 12, 15. This the apostle, futhermore, puts upon 
the ground that ' ' the gifts and calling of God are with- 
out repentance." — lb. 29. It w^as with a view to this re- 
lation of the covenant to Abraham's natural seed, that cir- 
cumcision was appointed as its seal. Said God: "I will 
establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed 
after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, 
to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee." — Gen. 
xvii, 7. Hence, by circumcision, the token of the cove- 
nant was set in the flesh of the males, through whom the 
descent is counted. So long, therefore, as the church was, 
for the divine purposes, restricted to the family of Israel, the 
rite of circumcision was necessary as a prerequisite condi- 
tion of admission to its pnvileges, because it w^as the seal 
of incorporation by birth or adoption into that family. 
But this did not constitute admission into the church. 
The Sinai covenant had its own baptismal seal. The 
church consisted, not of Israel, the circumcised; but only 
of the clean of Israel. Of this, baptism was the token and 
seal. It hence resulted that when the restriction was re- 
moved, and the gospel was given to the Gentiles, emanci- 
pated from the yoke of circumcision, baptism remained 
unchanged in place or office, the original and only seal of 
actual admission to the fellowship and privileges of the 
church of God. Of all this we shall see more hereafter. 



60 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 



Part III. 

ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS=SPRINKLINGS. 

Section XIIL — Uiiclean Seven Days. 

IN the laws of Moses there Avere two grades of uncleau- 
ness defined — imcleanness of seven days, and uuclean- 
ness till the even. The former was a symbol of that 
essential corruption which is in us by nature, to which are 
essential the redeeming blood of Christ and the renewing 
of the Holy Spirit, without which no man can see God in 
peace. Uncleanness till the even symbolized those casual 
defilements to which God's renewed people are liable by 
contact with the evil of the world. The ritual, concerning 
the uncleanness of seven days, w^as designed to signalize 
the light in which man's apostate nature, and the deprav- 
ity and sin thence resulting, appear in the sight of a God 
of ineffable holiness. To this conception the word unclean 
was designed to give expression, the intense meaning of 
which is liable to escape the casual reader of the Scrip- 
tures. It signified, not the mere external soiling of the 
living person, but death, corruption, and rottenness within 
the heart, the fermenting source of pollution poured forth 
in the outward life. To impress us with a just sense 
of the exceeding evil of this thing the Spirit employs 
every variety of figure expressive of deformity and loath- 
someness. In the primitive faith, of which the book of 
Job is a record, it is characterized in language which is a 
key-note to all the Scriptures on the subject. "Behold he 
putteth no trust in his saints" (his holy angels); "yea, the 
heavens are not pure in his sight. How much more abom- 
inable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like 



Skc. X 1 1 1 .] UNCLEAN- SE VEN DA YS. 61 

water." — Job xv, 15, 16. Says the Psalmist, *'The Lord 
looked dowu from heaven upou the children of men, to see 
if there were any that did understand and seek God. 
They are all gone aside; they are all together become 
filthy."— Psa. xiv, 3. Here the word "filthy" is in the 
margin rendered "stinking." It is the same in the origi- 
nal as in the above place in Job, and means the offensive- 
uess of putrefaction. David, in his penitential Psalm, 
indicates his sense of this radical evil of his nature. 
**Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me 
from my sin. . . . Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in 
sin did my mother conceive me. Behold thou desirest truth 
in the inivard parts : and in the hidden part thou shalt make 
me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall 
be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. . . . 
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right^ 
spirit within me." — Psa. li, 2-10. Isaiah and other sacred 
writers represent the same evil by the figures of the vomit 
and filthiness of a drunken debauch, and by every kind of 
abominable and loathsome thing. (Isa. xxviii, 8; Prov. 
XXX, 12.) By the designation, unclean, the moral deform- 
ity and oflfensiveness of Satan and the "unclean spirits," 
his angels, are described. And in the accounts of the 
riches of grace and glory in store for the church, the 
crowniug feature is the exclusion of the unclean. "A 
highway shall be there, and a way; and it shall be called, 
The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it." — 
Isa. XXXV, 8. The church is called upon for this cause 
to exult: "Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; 
put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; 
fi)r henceforth there shall no more come into thee the un- 
circumcised and the unclean." — lb. lii, 1. And again, John, 
in the vision of the glory of the new Jerusalem, which 
crowns and closes his revelation, says of her: "And there 
shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth" (lit- 
erally, "any thing unclean"), "neither. whatsoever worketh 



62 ADMINISTRRED BAPTISMS. [Pakt III. 

abomination, or maketh a lie; but they which are written 
in the Lamb's book of life." — Rev. xxi, 27. 

For the purpose of inducing a profound sense of this 
evil and loathsomeness of sin, as working in the heart, the 
ordinances respecting the uncleanness of seven days were 
appointed, each having its own lesson. 

1. The birth of a child was the actual propagation, 
from the parents, of part in the uncleanness of the apos- 
tate nature. It was, therefore, attended with natural phe- 
nomena, and marked by ritual ordinances Avhich character- 
ized it, and every function connected with it, as uncleau 
and deiiling. Emphasis was thus given to the challenge, 
"Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not 
one." — Job xiv, 4. 

2. Running issues of all kinds were appropriated as 
symbols of the corruption of man's nature, festering Avithin, 
and breaking forth in putrescent streams of depravity and 
sin in the active life. (Ezek. xvi, 6, 9.) 

3. Death is "the wages of sin" (Rom. vi, 23), and 
physical death is a terrible emblem of its loathsome and 
accursed nature. And as sin and the curse are diffused to 
Adam's seed by the very contagion of nature, this, their 
symbol, was ritually endowed wdth the same contagious 
character. He that touched the dead was reckoned no 
longer among the living bat the dead. He was, therefore, 
cast out from the camp, from his family, the sanctuary, 
and the privileges of the covenant. To them all he was 
dead. He was unclean. 

Thus, as the loving and bereaved stood by the couch 
of death, gazed upon the face and form once blooming in 
health and beauty, and beheld the sightless and sunken 
eyes, the ghastly features and cadaverous hue — pledges of 
corruption begun — while the very air of the chamber 
seemed to breathe the cry, "Unclean!" as they realized 
the instinctive recoil which love itself must feel from the 
very touch of the departed, and felt as Abraham, concern- 



Skc. XIIL] UNCLEAN SEVEN DAYS, 63 

iiig the beloved Sarah, the coDstraint to "bury his dead 
out of his sight," — as, iu all this, they knew that these last 
offices eveu must be fulfilled at the expense of defilement 
and exclusion from the privileges of God's earthly courts 
and tlie society of his people, for seven days, they and all 
Israel received a lesson of divme instruction as to the ex- 
ceeding sinfulness of sin, the wages of which is death, its 
loathsomeness in God's sight, its contagious diffusion and 
power, and its curse, to which human speech or angel elo- 
quence could have added nothing. 

4. No less impressive were the ordinances concerning 
leprosy. The name designated a class of diseases, some of 
which w^ould appear to have been altogether miraculous in 
their origin, and peculiar in their symptoms, while others 
were attributable to natural causes. The disease was pe- 
culiar for the shocking and loathsome appearance of its 
victim, its poisoning the blood and pervading the whole 
body, and its incurable and inevitably deadly nature. It 
was, therefore, employed by God as, at once, an extraord- 
inary punishment of sin, and a most fitting symbol of it, as 
seated in the heart and nature of man, and pervading and 
corrupting his whole being. (Num. xii, 10 ; 2 Kings v, 
27 ; 2 Chr. xxvi, 20.) The leper was accounted as one dead 
(Num. xii, 12), and, therefore, excluded from his family, 
from the congregation and ordinances at the sanctuary, and 
from the very camp of Israel, where the living God walked. 
(Num. V, 2 ; xii, 14.) Thus, outcast from the abodes of men 
and the house of God, " the leper in whom the plague is, his 
clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a 
covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry. Unclean ! Un- 
clean! All the days wherein the plague shall be in him, he 
shall be defiled; he is unclean ; he shall dwell alone; without 
the camp shall be his habitation." — Lev. xiii, 45, 4G. 
How dreadful the figure thus presented to the senses of 
Israel, of the loathsomeness of sin in God's sight, and of 
its ruinous effects upon the sinner ! The person offensive 



64 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 

with scabs and sores, the rent garments, the uncovered 
head, the waihng cry, '' Unclean ! Unclean !" while the ex- 
clusion from the house of God, and from the abodes of 
men, and the covered lip, proclaimed to Israel that the 
spiritual leper, yet in his sins, brings danger to his fellow- 
men with his very presence, and is an offense and loathing 
to God, before the eyes of whose purity he may not ven- 
ture to come, save through the cleansing blood and Spirit 
of Christ. Hence, the cry of Isaiah, when he beheld the 
glory of the Lord : " Woe is me ! for I am undone, because 
I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a 
people of unclean lips ; for mine eyes have seen the King, 
the Lord of hosts." And hence, the coal of fire from off 
the altar of atonement, and the seraph's assurance, " Lo, 
this hath touched thy lips ; and thine iniquity is taken 
away, and thy sin purged." — Isa. vi, 5-7. 

Thus, every way, under the idea of indwelling defile- 
ment, was sin and its source in man's corrupted nature held 
up to Israel as loathsome in itself, propagated to the race 
and infecting all, defiling in its contact, deadly in its in- 
dwelling power, and abhorrent to the eyes of God. 

Four circumstances in the ritual on these defilements 
are peculiar and characteristic : 

1. The first of these exhibits a broad and fundamental 
contrast between these defilements and those which con- 
tinued only till the even. The latter, as already intimated, 
presented the conception of an outward soiling of the liv- 
ing person. But the uncleanness of seven days exhibited 
the idea, not of surface defilement of the living, but of the 
loathsomeness and pollution of the dead and decaying car- 
cass, pouring out its own corruption, and infecting all 
around with its unclean and abhorrent presence, — a pollu- 
tion which no extrinsic or surface washing can ever cleanse. 
2. The defilement was for seven days. God's work of 
creation ended in the rest of the seventh day. That day 
was hence appropriated as a type of the final rest of Christ 



Sec. XIII.] UNCLEAN SEVEN DAYS. 65 

and his people upon the completed work of redemptiou. 
Hence, the argument of Paul: "For he spake of the 
seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh 
day from all his works. And in this place again, If they 
shall enter into my rest. There remaineth therefore a rest 
for the people of God."— Heb. iv, 4-9. "A rest:" liter- 
ally, as in the margin, ''a keeping of a Sabbath," or, "a 
Sabbatism." But the Sabbath thus reserved for God's 
people, coincides with " the day of judgment and perdition 
of ungodly men." Hence, a seven da3's' uncleanness was 
typical of such a corruption of nature as is essential and, 
therefore, persistent to the end ; and the exclusion of the 
defiled from the camp and the sanctuary signified the sen- 
tence of the judgment of the last day, when those w^hose 
natures are unrenewed, and whose sins are unpurged will 
be excluded from the Sabbath of redemption and from the 
new Jerusalem, and remain finally under the woe of the sec- 
ond death : " He that is filthy, let him be filthy still. . . . 
For without are dogs and sorcerers, and whoremongers, 
and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and 
maketh a lie." — Rev. xxii, 11, 15. 

3. The defilement was contagious. If the unclean for 
seven days touched a clean person, the latter was thereby 
defiled until the even. For, such is the inveteracy of this 
native corruption of the race that God's people are liable 
to defilement from every intercourse and contact with the 
world, — a defilement, however, which they will leave be- 
hind them when the day of earthly life is ended. There- 
fore, " Come out from among them, and be ye se|)arate, 
saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will 
receive you." — 2 Cor. vi, 17. 

4. This seven days' uncleanness could not be purified 
without sacrificial rites, and water sprinkled by the hand 
of one that was clean.. For nothing but the atoning merits 
of Christ's one oflTering, and the Spirit of life which he 
sheds down upon his people, can enter and cleanse our 

G 



66 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 

defiled nature, and fit us for admission to the presence of 
God, or for part in the New Jerusalem. All this will more 
fully appear as we proceed to notice the rites of purifying 
appointed for the several kinds of this uncleanness, re- 
spectively. 

Section XIV. — T/ie Baptism of a healed Leper. 

The rites appointed for the purifying of a healed leper 
come under two heads, — those administered by the priest, 
and those performed by the person himself. When a leper 
was healed, he was first inspected by the priest, who went 
forth to him to ascertain that the healing was real, and 
the disease eradicated. This being ascertained, the priest 
took two clean birds, and had one of them killed and its 
blood caught in an earthen vessel, with running water. 
He then took the remaining bird, alive, with cedar wood, 
scarlet, and hyssop, and dipped all together in the blood 
and water; ''and he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be 
cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronosnce 
him clean, and shall let the living bird loose into the open 
field." — Lev. xiv, 7. 

The rite which thus ended by the official decree of the 
priest, ''He is clean," completed the purification, properly 
so called. The man is now clean. The remaining ordi- 
nances were expressive of duties and 2:)rivileges proper to 
one who is cleansed and restored to the commonwealth of 
Israel, and the communion of God's house. First of these 
he was required to " wash his clothes, and shave ofi* all his 
hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean." — 
lb., vs. 8. He was now admitted to the camp, but must 
not yet enter his own tent, nor come to the tabernacle for 
seven days. On the seventh day he was again required to 
shave off all his hair, wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh ; 
and "he shall be clean."— Vs. 9. 

Now, on the eighth day, he came to the sanctuary, 
bringing a sacrifice of a trespass oflfering, a sin ofiering, and 



Skc. XIV.] BAPTISM OF HEALED LEPERS. 67 

a burnt offering. The rites attendant upon these offerings 
completed the ceremonial. Thenceforth, the leper resumed 
all the privileges of a son of Israel, in his family, in the 
the congregation, and at the sanctuary. 

The general signification of these ordinances is evident. 
The priest, by whom alone the cleansing rites could be 
administered, was the official representative of our great 
high-priest, Christ Jesus. The two birds were wdth the 
priest a complex type of him who offered himself without 
spot to God, who was dead and is alive for evermore, and 
by the merits of Avhose blood and the power of whose 
Spirit remission of sins and the new life of holiness are 
given to men. The first self-washing symbolized the duty 
of the redeemed to turn from their old ways and walk in 
holiness. The continued exclusion, for seven days, from his 
house and the sanctuary was a testimony that for the 
present we are pilgrims and strangers, and that only at 
the end of earth's trials and purgations can we enter our 
" house which is from heaven." The seventh day's W' ash- 
ing indicated the final putting off of all evil in the resur- 
rection ; and the offerings of the eighth represented the 
way whereby, in the regeneration, God's redeemed people 
shall have access to his presence and communion with him, 
through the blood of Jesus. 

We are now able to understand why the cleansing of 
the healed leper was thus separately ordered, and not in- 
cluded in the provision which we shall presently see was 
made, in common, for all other cases of seven days' un- 
cleanness. The extraordinary and frequently supernatural 
character of both the disorder and its cure rendered it 
proper and necessary to take it out of the category of or- 
dinary uncleannesses, and place it under the immediate 
jurisdiction of the priests. This M^as necessary, alike, in 
order to a judicial determination at first as to the existence 
of the leprosy, and afterward as to the cure. And the 
priestly administration of the rites of cleansing was equally 



68 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 

important, as constituting an official and authoritative 
proclamation of the healing and restoration of the leper. 

Section XV. — Baptism of those defiled by iJie Dead. 

The purification of the leper must have been of rare 
occurrence. All the facts and indications of the Scriptures 
tend to the conclusion that, except by miraculous agency, 
tlie disease ^vas incurable. The baptism of Israel at Sinai 
was extraordinary in its nature and circumstances, and 
could not have been repeated except in circumstances 
equally remarkable, such as that when, in the plains of 
Moab, the covenant was renewed with the new generation, 
which had risen up to take the place of those who perished 
in the wilderness. (Deut. xxix, 1.) But of that transac- 
tion the particulars are not recorded. In the water of 
separation, provision w^as made for an ordinary rite, essen- 
tially the same, in its nature, mode, and meaning, as the 
Sinai baptism ; and so ordered as to serve as a continual 
memorial and repetition of it, and reiteration of the prom- 
ises and instructions therein embodied. This rite was ap- 
pointed for the cleansing of defilements of daily occur- 
rence, and was maintained through all the after history 
of Israel, until the time of Christ, and the destruction of 
Jerusalem. It was known to the Jews by the name of 
baptism. 

In preparation for this rite, a red heifer without blem- 
ish was chosen by the priest, and slain without the camp, 
whence the priest sprinkled the blood toward the door of 
the tabernacle of the congregation seven times. The en- 
tire heifer w^as then burned, while the priest cast cedar 
wood, hyssop, and scarlet into the burning. The ashes 
were gathered and laid up in a clean place, without the 
camp. (Num. xix, 2-10.) They were to be "kept for 
the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of 
separation." — lb. 9. By the phrase, " water of separa- 
tion," is not meant a water to cause separation, but a 



Sec. XVI.] BAPTISM FROM ISSUES. 69 

remedy for it. They were, as Zecliariali expresses it, ''Jot 
sin and /or uncleanness." — Zecli. xiii, 1. 

The primary case for Avhich they were provided was 
that of defilement by tlie dead. (Num. xix, 17, 18.) 
Whoever touched a dead body or bone of a man, or a 
grave, was defiled thereby, as was the tent or house where 
the body lay, and the furniture and utensils that were in 
it. For the purifying of these, some of the ashes of the 
heifer were mingled, in an earthen vessel, with running 
water. A clean person then took a bush of hyssop, and, 
dipping it into the water, sprinkled it on the persons or 
things to be cleansed. This was done on the third day, 
and repeated on the seventh. "And on the seventh day 
he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe 
himself in water, and shall be clean at even." — Num. xix, 
2-19. Thus, as in the case of the leper, the rites for de- 
filement by the dead were divided into two categories, — 
those administered by the priest or a clean person acting 
officially, and those performed by the subject himself. The 
importance of the distinction thus made between rites ad- 
ministered and those self-performed is worthy of repeated 
and emphatic notice. The former symbolized Christ's and 
the Spirit's agency ; the latter, the active personal obedi- 
ence and holiness of the believer's life. 

It appears from the rabbins that, at least during the 
later period of JcAvish history, the purifying of persons 
was, whenever practicable, performed at Jerusalem, by the 
hand of a priest, and with water drawn from the pool of 
Siloam, which flowed fri)m the foot of the temple mount. 
For the purifying of houses and other things, the ashes 
were sent throughout the land, and the rites performed 
where the uncleanness was contracted. 

Section XVI. — Purifying from Issues. 

The remaining forms of major uncleanness are those of 
childbirth, and of issues. (Lev. xii, 2; xv, 13, 19, 20, 



70 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III 

25.) The places here referred to in the book of Leviticus 
contain the only directions as to purifying which specify 
these cases. Were our attention confined to those chap- 
ters, we might imagine that for these defilements there 
were no purifyings required, except in one single case, a 
self- washing for men healed of issues. But there are sev- 
eral things which suggest the propriety of looking farther 
before accepting that conclusion. 

1. The instructions given in these places, if taken by 
themselves are incongruous. Thus, a man cured of an 
issue w^as directed to "number to himself seven days for 
his cleansing, and wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in 
running water, and he shall be clean." But of a woman 
it is said: ''She shall number to herself seven days, and 
after that she shall be clean." — ^Lev. xv, 13, 28. In neither 
of the cases of female defilement is there mention made of 
any purifying rites whatever, although the seven days of 
purifying are specified in each of them. And yet if any 
one had but touched the bed, or the seat of a woman so 
defiled, he must "w^ash his clothes, and bathe his flesh, and 
be unclean until the even." — Vs. 19-23. I do not here ac- 
count as rites of purifying the offerings which in each case 
the parties, after being cleansed, were required to make at 
the sanctuary. In those offerings they claimed and exer- 
cised the privilege of communion at his table with the God 
of Israel — the highest privilege of the clean. Admission to 
it was, therefore, a formal and conclusive attestation to 
them as already clean. 

2. The manifest analogy between these defilements, 
and those arising from leprosy and contact with the dead, 
indicates the necessity of analogous rites of purifying for 
them all. The intimacy of relation between their several 
meanings we have seen. It is attested by the whole tenor 
of Scripture. The same period of seven days marked 
them all — a period emphasized, even where the uncleanness 
was prolonged to thirty-three and sixty-six days. (Lev. 



Src. XVI.] BAPT/SM FROM ISSUES. 71 

xii, 2, 4, 5.) They all were iuclucled iu oue decree of ex- 
clusion from the camp, except for manifest reasons — women 
in childbed. (Num. v, 2.) At the end of the seven days 
of purifying, when they were clean, offerings were to be 
made at the sanctuary by the leper, the Nazarite defiled 
by the dead, and all the others, except those purged from 
the ordinary defilement by the dead. And the offerings 
were in each case essentially the same. The leper, if able, 
brought three lambs, one for a trespass-offering, the second 
for a sin-offering, and the third for a burnt-offering. If 
lie was poor, he brought one lamb for a trespass-offering, 
and two young turtles or pigeons, one for a sin-offering, 
and the other for a burnt-offering. This offering of a 
lamb and two turtles was the same that was required of 
a Nazarite, defiled by the dead, after his cleansing. (Num. 
vi, 10, 12.) The two turtles, or pigeons, were alone re- 
quired of those defiled by childbirth, or by issues, one for 
a sin-oflTering, and the other for a burnt-offering. Thus, 
the only difference in these observances was the trespass- 
offering which was, for evident reasons, required of the 
Nazarite and the leper, and of them only. The Nazarite, 
although by an involuntary act, had trespassed in profaning 
the head of his consecration. (Num. vi, 9.) As to the 
leper, his disease seems usually, if not always, to have been 
a special divine retribution for some specific and aggra- 
vated offense, for which, therefore, upon his cleansing, a 
trespass-offering was required. (Num. xii, 10 ; 2 Kings v, 
27; 2 Chron. xxvi, 19.) 

3. The supposition that these defilements all did not 
call for rites of purifying essentially the same in each case, 
would involve incongruity and contradiction in the testi- 
monies uttered by them severally. That they all were 
typical of human depravity in its different aspects can not 
be questioned ])y any one who will candidly study the 
Scriptures, and especially the Levitical and prophetic books 
on the subject. But, upon the supposition in question, 



72 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 

their several representations as to the remedy are irrecon- 
cilable. For leprosy, and those dehled with the dead, the 
rites of purifying declare that there is cleansing for man's 
moral defilement nowhere but in the blood and Spirit of 
Christ. But the rites for cleansing a man defiled with an 
issue would proclaim our own Avorks and righteousness all- 
sufficient; whilst the silence of the law as to any rites 
whatever for women, in any form of issue, would declare 
no cleansing necessary, but that time and death would 
purify all. Thus, three several testimonies, each contra- 
dictory to the others, are incorporated in the ordinances, 
if complete in those chapters. 

The key to these difficulties is found in the general 
character and intent of the law .concerning the water of 
separation. That law was the latest that was given on 
the subject of purifyings, and is, therefore, not expressly re- 
ferred to in the earlier regulations wdiich have been under 
examination, although the divine Law^giver intended the 
later statute to fill up and supplement those wdiicli had 
gone before. Of this there is a very plain indication in 
the ordinances respecting the Nazarite. "If any man die 
suddenly by him, and he hath defiled the head of his con- 
secration, then he shall shave his head in the day of his 
cleansing; on the seventh day shall he shave it." — Num. 
vi, 9. Here the defiling effect of contact with the dead is 
not declared, but assumed; although the law to that pur- 
pose was not yet given. It is left to the subsequent ordi- 
nance (Num. xix) to prescribe the rites of cleansing, which 
are here, as in the rules concerning issues, alluded to, but 
not stated. 

Those rites might seem to relate only to the case of de- 
filement by the dead. But among the directions as to them, 
there is one which is unequivocal and comprehensive. "The 
man that shall be unclean and shall not purify himself, 
that soul shall be cut oflT from among the congregation, 
because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the Lord ; the 



Skc. XVI.] BAPTISM FROM ISSUES. 73 

ater of separation hath not been sprinkled on him. He 
is unclean." — ^Xum. xix, 20. Here is no limitation nor 
exception of any kind. '* The man that is unclean;" un- 
clean, from whatever cause. Of all such, we are here cer- 
tified that no lapse of time will bring cleansing. He must 
be purified before he can be clean. Till that is accom- 
plished, his presence is a profanation of the sanctuarr. It 
is, moreover, here declared that the one onlj mode of 
cleansing for all such was the water of separation, sprinkled 
according to the law. That this is a true interpretation, is 
confirmed by the testimony of Philo, of Alexandria, a Jew- 
ish writer of the highest reputation, contemporary with the 
apostles. Giving an account of the Levitical law, he dis- 
tinguishes between defilements of the soul and of the body; 
by the latter meaning, ritual defilements. Of them, he 
says, in unrestricted terms, that the water of separation 
was appointed for puritying from those things by which a 
body is ritually defiled.* 

"We shall presently see one notable example of this com- 
prehensive interpretation of the law, in the case of the 
daughters of Midian. Their need of the rites of purifying 
did not arise out of any of the categories specified in the 
laws which we have examined. They were unclean, be- 
cause they were idolatrous Gentiles (Compare Acts xv, 9) ; 
aud were purified with the water of separation, because 
at was the general provision made for the unclean. This 
further illustrated in the fact that all the spoil taken at 
e same time was also purified with this same water of 
paration. (Xum. xxxi, 19-24.) 
A fiict remains, which is conclusive of the present point. 
It is the remarkable name by which the purifying elements 
are designated. " It shall be kept for the congregation of 
the children of Israel for a water of (nidda) separation." 
This wor«i, nidda, occurs in the Old Testament twenty-three 
times. Its radical idea is exclusion, banishment. Hence, 

* Below p. 175. 



74 ADMh\USTERED BAPTISMS. [Paiit III. 

the name of the land to whicli Cain was driven. "Cain 
went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the 
land of Nod," that is, " the land of banishment." — Gen. iv, 

16. Under this general idea of exclusion, the particular 
form, nidda, is appropriated to the separating or putting 
away of a wife from her husband, and to the uncleannesses 
which gave occasion to such separation. And inasmuch as 
God is the husband of his church, the same word is used 
to designate those apostasies and sins which separate her 
from his favor and communion. (Lam. i, 17 ; Ezek. xxxvi, 

17, etc.) In the tw^o chapters in Leviticus, which present 
the law respecting defilement by childbirth and by issues 
(Lev. xii and xv), the word occurs no less than eleven 
times. Those who were thus defiled w^ere, nidda, "put 
apart," "separated." Six times, in the directions as to the 
ashes of the red heifer, the water is called ' ' a water of 
^idda."— Num. xix, 9, 13, 20, 21, 21; xxxi, 23. Once, 
again, the word is used in the same way by the prophet 
Zechariah. (Zech. xiii, 1.) "A fountain for sin and for 
nidda" Elsewdiere it always has distinct reference, literal 
or figurative, to the causes of separation here indicated ; 
whilst it is worthy of special mention, that it never desig- 
nates defilement by the dead. 

The conclusion implied in these facts becomes a demon- 
stration wdien we observe that in the figurative language 
of the prophets, the defilement of nidda is expressly re- 
ferred to as requiring the sprinkled water of purifying. In 
Ezekiel (xvi, 1-14) God's gracious dealings with Israel 
at the beginning are described under the figure of the 
marriage tie. "I sware unto thee, and entered into a cov- 
enant with thee, and thou becamest mine. Then washed 
I thee w4th water; yea, I thoroughly washed aw^ay thy 
blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil." — vs. 8, 9. 
"I thoroughly washed away." The verb in the original 
is shataph, which will be critically examined in another 
place. It signifies such action as of a dashing rain. In 



Sue. XVI.] BAPTISM FROM ISSUES. 75 

another place (Ezek, xxxvi, 17-26)^ the Lord, under the 
same ligure, describes the subsequent transgressions of Is- 
rael: "Their ^vay \vas before me as nidda." — v. 17. Be- 
cause of this, God declares that he scattered them among 
the nations. But, says the Lord, "I will take you from 
among the heathen and gather you out of all countries, 
and will bring you into your o\Yn land. Then will I 
sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean ; from 
all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse 
you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit 
will I put within you." — vs. 24-26. 

So, says the Spirit by Zechariah: "In that day there 
shall be a fountain (a flowing spring) opened to the 
house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for 
sin and for nklda." — Zech. xiii, 1. Nidda, then, signi- 
fied a defilement for which that fountain was necessary; 
and to imagine the ritual uncleanness of nidda to have 
been healed without ritual water of purifying, would be to 
suppose the ordinance to contradict the doctrine of the 
prophets. 

From these passages it appears : (L) That the defile- 
ment of nidda was a figure representing the sins and 
apostasies of Israel, viewed as God's covenant people, his 
married wife. (2.) That the sprinkling of water is the 
ordinance divinely chosen to represent the mode of the 
Spirit's agency in cleansing from these offenses. (3.) That 
this defilement and the water of nidda were so intimately 
associated with each other in the usage of Israel as to serve 
the prophets for a familiar illustration of the gracious 
purposes of God, indicated in the texts. If the figure of 
speech used by the prophet is the proper one for illustrat- 
ing his doctrine in words, the water of nidda sprinkled on 
the unclean was the appropriate form by which to express 
it in ritual action. When, tliorefore, in the light of these 
facts, we read the law tliat the ashes of the heifer "shall 
be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for 



76 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Pakt III. 

a water of nidda," tlie conclusioD is irresistible, that those 
defiled with nidda Avere to be purified with that water. 
And when to this we add the further declaration concern- 
ing "the man that is unclean/' and is not sprinkled with 
it, and see it illustrated by the case of the Midianite chil- 
dren, the further conclusion is equally evident that, excej)t 
the peculiar case of the leper, the water of separation was 
designed for all classes of seven days' defilement. To all 
others who were in a state of ritual separation from the 
communion of Israel, it was essential in order to being 
restored. 

Section XVII. — TJie Baptism of Proselytes. 

Maimonides was a learned Spanish Jew of the twelfth 
century. He wrote large commentaries upon the institu- 
tions and laws of Israel. Concerning the reception of 
proselytes, he is quoted as saying: "Circumcision, bap- 
tism, and a free-will oflTering, were required of any Gentile 
who desired to enter into the covenant, to take refuge un- 
der the wrings of the divine majesty, and assume the yoke^ 
of the law; but if it was a woman, baptism and an offer- 
ing were required, as we read, ' One law and one manner 
shall be for you and for the stranger that sojourueth with 
you.' — ISTum. XV, 16. But what was the law 'for you'? 
The covenant was confirmed by circumcision and baptism 
and free-will offerings. So was it confirmed with the 
stranger, with these three. But now, that no oblations 
are made [the temple being destroyed], circumcision and 
baptism are required. But after the temj^le shall have 
been restored, then also it will be necessary that an offering 
be made. A stranger who is circumcised and not baptized, 
or baptized and not circumcised, is not called a proselyte 
till both are performed."* Various similar statements are 
frequently quoted from the same writer, and from the 

* Maimonides, Issure Biah, Perek 13, in Lightfoot, Harmo- 
nia Evang. in Joan i, 25. 



Sec. XVII.] BAPTISM OF PROSELYTES. 77 

Talmud. Respecting them the folio wiug points are to be 
noticed : 

1. The Hebrew word which is used by Maimonides and 
the Talmudic writers, and is here translated, to baptize, is 
iahal^ a word which in the books of Moses is never used to 
designate rites of purifying of any kind. 

2. The tdbalings, or Talmudic baptisms, were self-per- 
formed, and not the act of an official administrator. The 
reception of the person must be sanctioned by the con- 
sistory or eldership of a synagogue, and attested by the 
presence of three witnesses. But it was performed by the 
person's own act. Being disrobed, and standing in the 
water, he was instructed by a scribe in certain precepts 
of the law. Having heard these, he plunged himself 
under the water ; and as he came up again, ' ' Behold he 
is an Israelite in all things." If it Avas a woman, she was 
attended by women, while the scribes stood apart and read 
the precepts: "And as she plungeth herself, they turn 
away their faces, and go out, when she comes out of the 
water."* It is perfectly evident that the rite thus de- 
scribed is wholly foreign to any thing to be found in the 
Mosaic law, and that it belonged to the category of self- 
washings, and not to that of the sacrament, in which an 
official administrator was essential to the validity of the rite. 

3. This baptism is an invention of the scribes, of post 
Biblical origin. Our sources of information are (1) the 
Scriptures and Apocrypha; (2) the writings of Philo and 
Josephus, authors, the former of whom was contemporary 
with Christ, and the latter with the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem, both of whom wrote largely of the institutions and 
history of the Jews ; (3) the Targums of Onkelos and of 
Jonathan; (4) the Mishna; (5) the Gemaras, 

Tlie Targums are Aramaic versions of the Old Testament. 
The Jews, at the return from the Babylonish cai)tivity, 
had lost the knowledge of the Hebrew language. It was, 

* Maimonides, as above, in Lightfoot, on John iii, 23. 



78 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 

therefore, uecessary that the public reading of the Scrip- 
tures should be accompanied with a translation into the 
Aramaic dialect, which they now used. (Neh; viii, 2-8.) 
The translations thus given were, no doubt, at first extem- 
poraneous and somewhat variable. But they gradually 
assumed fixed forms, more or less accurate, as they received 
the impress of different schools of interpreters. At first 
transmitted orally, they were at length committed to writ- 
ing, the Targum of Onkelos soon after the end of the 
second century, and that of Jonathan a century later. 
The former, as a rule, keeps closely to the text. The 
Targum of Jonathan indulges "more in paraphrase. The 
Mishna is the text of the Oral law, the traditions of the 
scribes. It was reduced to writing by Rabbi Judah Hak- 
kadosh, about the end of the first century, and is believed 
to be a faithful exhibit of the traditions of the Jews, as 
they stood at that time. The two Gemaras, with the 
Mishna, constitute the Talmud. They are collections of 
interpretations and commentaries on the Mishna, or oral 
law, by the most eminent scribes. The Jerusalem or Pal- 
estinian Gemara was compiled in the third and fourth 
centuries, and that of Babylonia one or two centuries 
later. The former represents the great rabbinic seminary 
at Tiberias, in Galilee ; the latter that of Sora, on thfe 
Euphrates. * 

From these sources of information, the indications are 
conclusive that Talmudic baptism came into use after the 
destruction of Jerusalem. We have seen already part of 
the evidence, Avhich will be more fully developed in the 
following pages, that no such rite was ordained in the law, 
observed by Israel, or recognized in the Scriptures. The 
Apocrypha are equally silent on the subject. The writings 



* According to Etherid.ce, the final revision of the Babylo- 
nian Gemara was completed by Rabbi Jose, president of the 
rabbinic seminary at Pumbaditlia, on the Euphrates, in the year 
499 or 500. — Jerusalem and Tiberias, pp. 174-176. 



Skc. XVII.] BAPTISM OF PROSELYTES. 79 

of Philo aud Josepliiis ignore such a rite; as do the Tar- 
guins and ^[ishna. In the hitter, the word, tdhal, which is 
commonly translated, to dip, is used constantly to designate 
the self- washings of the law, which, as will presently ap- 
pear, can not have been immersions. In fact, there is 
sufficient evidence that this word, in addition to its modal 
sense, was also used to express a washing or cleansing, 
irrespective of the manner. That it was so employed to 
describe the cleansing of Naaman, will hereafter appear. 
It is not until we come to the Gemara of Babylonia, dating 
at the close of the fifth century, long after the destruction 
of Jerusalem and cessation of the temple service, that we 
meet with any distinct account of proselyte immersion. 
After that it is found everywhere. 

4. Whilst it is thus evident that the baptisms of the 
Talmud are wholly without divine warrant, they are never- 
theless valuable as constituting an authentic rabbinic tra- 
dition that a purifying with water was requisite in the 
reception of proselytes. A key to the truth on this subject 
presents itself in a statement found in the INIishna. "As 
to a proselyte who becomes a proselyte on the eve of the 
passover" (that is 'the evening before the day of the pass- 
over), "the school of Shammai say, Let him receive the 
ritual bath" (tdbal), "aud let him eat the passover in the 
evening; but the disciples of Hillel say, He that separates 
himself from his uncircumcision is like one who separates 
himself from a sepulcher."^ It thus appears that between 
the two schools of Jewish scribes there was a division on 
this subject. The one party taught that the uncleanness 
of the Gentiles was of such a nature as to require seven 
days of purifying with the water of nklda, according to 
the law for one defiled by the dead. The others held 
them subject to that minor uncleanness which ceased with 
the close of the day, upon the performance of the pre- 
scribed self-washing. We shall presently see that the 

*Tract Pesachim, cap. viii, g 8. 



80 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 

former were correct, according to the explicit testimony of 
the Scriptures. But here we have a clue to the later 
history of Jewish practice on the subject. Upon the de- 
struction of Jerusalem and the termination of the sacri- 
ficial services there, the rites for purifying with the water 
of nidda were of necessity pretermitted, as the ashes of 
the heifer were no longer obtainable. The rabbins were, 
therefore, induced to substitute the self-washing which 
the looser school of scribes had already espoused. At 
what precise time the self-washings of the law became the 
self-immersions of the Gemaras does not appear. But at 
the beginning of the Christian era, causes had been already 
for centuries at work which were abundantly sufficient to 
account for the change. From the times of the captivities, 
the vast multitude of Hebrews who never returned, dwell- 
ing in Babylonia and the farther east, had been exposed 
to the influences arising from the religions of the lands of 
their dispersion, as embodied in the Zend Avesta and the 
Shasters, the teachings of Zoroaster and of the Brahmins, 
and from the related manners and customs and religious 
rites which have their native seats ujion the banks of the 
Indus and the Ganges. The profoundness of the opera- 
tion of these influences is seen in the pantheism of the 
Kabala, traceable as it is to the kindred doctrines of the 
Zend Avesta and the Vedas.* How conspicuous the place 
held by self-immersion in the religious customs of the peo- 
ple of the East, from the earliest ages, every one knows. 
The Hebrews dwelhng among them Avere not restricted by 
the law to any defined mode of self-washing in fulfilling its 
requirements. It was, therefore, natural and inevitable 
for them to adopt the mode which was daily practiced before 
their eyes. The relations between the Jews of "the Dis- 
persion," and those of Palestine, were of the most intimate 



■*This is clearly shown by Etheridge, in "Jerusalem and 
Tiberias." Pp. 339 et seq. The same thing is largely illustrated 
in Blavatsky'g "Isis Revealed." 



Sec. XVII.] BAPTISM OF PROSELYTES. 81" 

kiud, sustained through attendance upon the annual feasts 
at Jerusalem (Acts ii, 9), and afterwards by continual cor- 
respondence and travel, and by the intercourse of the 
school at Tiberias with those of Sora and Pumbaditha. 
If to these facts be added the tendency by which the rab- 
bins would seek to compensate for the absence of the 
water of nldcla, by expanding and magnifying the self- 
washings which were still practicable, there remains no 
ground of surprise or perplexity in finding self-immersion 
installed among the imperative observances set forth in the 
Gemaras. Of the disposition to supply the place of the 
now impracticable rites by the enlargement of others, the 
Talmud affords more than one example. 

I have said that the Scriptural mode of purifying 
for proselytes was by sprinkling with the w^ater of nidda. 
Of its use there is a conspicuous example. On account 
of their licentious wiles against Israel, Midian was doomed 
to destruction. In the campaign which followed, none 
were spared, except the female children. These Avere 
reserved for bond servants. (Num. xxxi, 18; and compare 
Lev. XXV, 44-46; and Deut. xxi, 10-14.) But, from the 
days of Abraham, all bond servants had been by divine 
authority and command endowed with an equal right and 
share with their masters in God's favor and covenant. 
And as Israel itself had been purified from the defilements 
and idolatries of Egypt, and ordained as the peculiar peo- 
ple of God by the baptism of blood and water at Sinai, so 
these children of licentious Midian, spared from the de- 
struction incurred by their parents, and about to be joined 
with Israel as God's people, must be cleansed and admitted 
in the same manner. 

During the expedition, many of the army had become 
defiled by contact with the slain, and were therefore to be 
cleansed with the water of separation, according to the 
law. Moses, therefore, issued orders to the men of the 
army: "Do ye abide without the camp seven days; who- 



82 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part HI. 

soever hath killed any person, and whosoever hath touched 
any slain, purify both yourselves and your captives on the 
third day, and on the seventh day." In these directions 
as to the third and seventh days, we recognize the exact 
requirements of the law, with respect to the water of sep- 
aration for the purification of sin. But the narrative is 
still more specific. '' Eleazer the priest said unto the men 
of war which went to the battle. This is the ordinance of 
the law which the Lord commanded Moses. Only the gold 
and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, and the lead, 
every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go 
through the fire, and it shall be clean. Nevertheless, it 
shall be purified with the water of separation, and all that 
abideth not the fire ye shall make go through the water. 
And ye shall wash your clothes on the seventh day, and 
ye shall be clean, and afterw^ard ye shall come into the 
camp." — Num. xxxi, 19-24. ''The water of separation," 
here, is, in the original, " the water of nidda," — the water, 
that is, in which were mingled the ashes of the red heifer. 
With this, therefore, it was that these daughters of Midian 
were baptized and cleansed. There were thirty-two thou- 
sand of these captives, thus rescued from the destruction 
incurred by the licentiousness and crimes of their own peo- 
ple, purged from their uncleauness, engrafted into the 
family of Abraham, and endowed with the blessings of 
the covenant. All w^ere " W' omen children" (Num. xxxi, 
18) ; and, undoubtedly, many were mere babes ; the first 
recorded example of distinctive infant baptism. 

Section XVIII. — The Baptism of Infants. 

We have seen that in the Abrahamic covenant, — the 
betrothal of the church, — the infant sons were expressly 
included on equal terms with their fathers ; and that in the 
Sinai espousal the infants of both sexes were joined with 
their parents in the bonds of the covenant, and in the re- 
ception of its baptismal seal. We have seen the young 



Sec. XVIIL] BAPTISM OF INFANTS. 83 

daughters of Midian purified and admitted to the covenant 
and church of Israel by the same sacrament, ^y these 
unquestionable facts, the principle of infant membership in 
the church, and the mode of its certification by baptism, 
are both alike clearly estabhshed. The Scriptures con- 
tain conclusive evidence that the children of after i;^enera- 
tions of Israel were received to the covenant and the 
church in like manner, by baptism with the water of 
separation. 

1. The law of God was explicit that " one ordinance 
shall be both for you of the congregation and also for the 
stranger that sojourneth with you, an ordinance forever in 
your generations ; as ye are so shall the stranger be before 
the Lord. One law and one manner shall be for you and 
for the stranger that sojourneth with you." — Num. xv, 
14-16. From this law, it results as a necessary conclusion, 
that inasmuch as the Midianite children were baptized, the 
same must have been the rule for the infants of Israel. 

2. Circumcision was the seal of the Abrahamic cove- 
nant, but not of that of Sinai. So long as the church was 
confined to the family of Israel after the flesh, this rite, as 
being the proof and seal of membership in that family was 
essential as a condition precedent to the enjoyment of the 
privileges of the church ; but did not, of itself, seal or con- 
vey a right to them. Otherwise, every circumcised person 
would have been entitled to those privileges ; whereas they 
were reserved exclusively for the clean. 

3. While such was the case, it was a fundamental arti- 
cle of the faith from the beginning, that men are all natively 
unclean. Job, Eliphaz, and Bildad, each severally states 
it as an unquestionable proposition that man born of woman 
must be so. (Job xiv, 4; xv, 14; xxv, 4.) David cries: 
" Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother 
conceive me. . . . Purge me with hyssop and I shall be 
clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow." — Psalm 
H, 5-7. He not only recognizes the radical nature of his 



84 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 

moral corruption as born in Lim, but indicates the remedy 
under the very figure of sprinlding with the water of nidda, 
to which the hyssop refers. The Lord Jesus, speaking at 
a time ^vhen the Old Testament ordinances and system 
were still in full force, testifies, "That which is born of 
the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Sj^irit is 
spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee. Ye must be born 
again." — John iii, 6, 7. 

4. To signalize this native corruption of man and the 
remedy, the ordinances concerning the defilement of nidda 
and its cleansing were appointed. In them the new born 
infant was regarded as the product of overflowing corrup- 
tion, and as a fountain of defilement to the mother, who 
thus became unclean, until purified with the water of 
separation. 

5. The child was identified wdth the mother in this un- 
cleanness (1) as being its cause in her ; (2) as being sub- 
ject to her touch, which was defiling to the clean; and (3) 
as being bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh, born of 
her body. 

6. In accordance with the doctrine of man's native de- 
filement, above illustrated, it was characteristic of the law 
that it recognized none as clean, unless purged by water 
of sprinkling. - The infants at Sinai were so purified and 
admitted to the covenant, as well as their parents. So it 
was with the daughters of Midian ; and no other principle 
was known to the law, — no other practice tolerated by it. 
" The man" (the person) "that shall be unclean, and shall 
not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off" from among 
the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of 
the Lord : the water of separation hath not been sprinkled 
upon him ; he i^ unclean." — Num. xix, 20. 

7. It is a very remarkable fact, that while we have in 
the Scriptures but one single example specifically mentioned 
of the purifying of an infant from this ritual defilement 
of birth, that example occurs in the person of Him re- 



Skc. XIX.] BAPTISM OF THE LEVITES. 85 

specting wliom the angel said to Mary, "That holy thing 
which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of 
God." — Luke i, 35. In the same gospel in which is this 
record, we read, respecting Mary, in the common version, 
tliat "when the days of licr 2:)urification, according to the 
law of Moses, were accomplished, they brouglit Jesus to 
Jerusalem to present him to the Lord." — lb. ii, 22. But it 
is agreed by critical editors that this is a corrupted reading, 
which is wholly without authority from any respectable 
manuscript. Instead of " the days (antes) of her purifica- 
tion," it should read (autdn), "the days of their purifica- 
tion;" that is, of both mother and child. Beside all the 
other authorities, the three oldest manuscripts, Sinaiticus, 
Yaticauus, and Alexandrinus, unite in this reading. How 
the mothers were purified, we have seen; and, from these 
facts, we know the children to have shared with them in 
the baptism. 

Section XIX. — TJie BaiMsm of the Levites. 

The case of the Levites, in their cleansing and conse- 
cration, was peculiar. They had already enjoyed with the 
rest of the congregation the purifying rites and sprinkled 
seal of the Sinai covenant ; and were thus, in the ordinary 
sense of the Mosaic ritual, clean, and competent to the enjoy- 
ment of the ordinances and i)rivileges of Israel. But when 
they were set apart to a special nearness to God, in the service 
of the sanctuary, they were required to undergo additional 
ceremonies of purifying. Moses was instructed to " take 
the Levites from among the children of Israel and cleanse 
them. And thus shalt thou do unto them to cleanse them. 
Sprinkle water of purifying upon them ; and let them 
shave all their flesh, and let them wash their clothes, and 
so make themselves clean." They were then to bring two 
bullocks; "and the Levites shall lay their hands upon the 
heads of the bullocks, and thou shalt ofier the one for a 
sin-offering, and the other for a burnt-ofiering, unto the 



86 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 

Lord, to make an atonement for the Levites. And thou 
slialt set the Levites before Aaron and before his sons, and 
offer them for an offering unto the Lord. Thus shalt thou 
separate the Levites from among the children of Israel; 
and the Levites shall be mine." — Num. viii, 6-14. 

Section XX. — Tlie^e all ivere one Baptism. 

The baptism of the Levites was official and peculiar. 
Its analogies to the other examples will readily occur to 
the reader, as we proceed. As to them, there is a common 
identity in all essential points, in form, meaning, and 
office. The design of the first administration at Sinai, and 
of all the attendant circumstances, was to impress Israel 
with a profound and abiding sense of the evil of sin, and 
of their own utter vileness and ruin as sinners in the pres- 
ence of a God of infinite power, majesty, and holiness; and 
to illustrate to them the manner in which grace and sal- 
vation are given. In accepting that baptism, Israel pro- 
fessed to submit themselves to his sovereignty and ac- 
cept him in the ofiices of his grace, as symbolized in the 
baptismal rites. On God's behalf, the transaction was an 
acceptance and acknowledgment of them as his covenant 
people. The laws of defilement and the rites of purifying 
were continual reminders and re-enactiugs of the Sinai 
transaction, and for the same essential purpose, — the re- 
storing to the fellowship of the covenant of those who 
came under its forfeiture. In each several case, sacrificial 
elements — blood or ashes — were applied by sprinkling. In 
each, those elements were mingled with running water, 
and the instrument for sprinkling was a bush of, hyssop, 
and in each, scarlet and cedar were used. 

The meaning of the scarlet, cedar, and hyssop is un- 
explained in the Scriptures. Expositors have wandered 
in conjectures, leading to no satisfactory conclusions. One 
result of their use is manifest. To us, devoid of meaning, 
they more distinctly mark the essential ■ identity of the 



Skc. XX.] THESE WERE ONE BAPTISM. 87 

rites, ill which they occupy the same place, and perform the 
same office. This may have been one design of their use. 
Tlie essential identity of these rites is altogether con- 
sistent with the minute variations in their forms. These 
had respect to the diversity of circumstances under which 
they were administered. The inferior dignity of a single 
person, a leper, as compared with the whole people, ex- 
plains the acceptance of lambs or birds for his offerings, 
while bulls and goats were sacrificed for the nation. In 
the case of ordinary uncleannesses, the circumstances ren- 
dered special provision necessary. Sacrifice was lawful 
only at the sanctuary, which was the figure of the one 
holy place and altar Avhere Christ ministers in heaven. 
But death and other causes of unclcanness were occurring 
everywhere. The ashes of the red heifer were, therefore, 
provided. They presented sacrificial elements in a form 
incorruptible and convenient for transportation. They 
were a most fitting representation of the "incorruptible 
blood of Qirist." And, as the proper place of the priests 
was at the sanctuary, and their presence could not be ex- 
pected on every occasion of uncleanness elsewhere, it was 
ap[)ointed that any clean person might perform the sprink- 
ling. This was, in fact, a mere ministerial sequel to the 
sacrificial rites, performed by the priest, at the burning of 
the red heifer. The probability of the circumstances, and 
intimations from the rabbins, lead to the conclusion that, 
as the priests multiplied and were released from the neces- 
sity of constant attendance at the sanctuary, they were 
commonly called to sprinkle the water of purifying. In 
fact, the Talmud indicates that in the later times the ad- 
ministration, when practicable, took place at Jerusalem, by 
the hands of the priests, with water from the pool of Siloam, 
which, flowing from beneath the temple, was recognized as 
a type of the Holy Spirit.* 

* Compare Ezek. xlvii, 2; John ix, 7. "Go wash in the 
pool of Siloam, which is by interpretation, Sent." 



88 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Paut III. 

The minute variations traceable in these rites only make 
it the more clear that essentially, in form, meaning, and 
office, they were one baptism. 

Section XXI. — Tim Symbol was derived from the Bain. 

We have seen, in the prophecy of Isaiah, the source 
whence the figure of sprinkling or pouring is derived. '*! 
will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon 
the dry ground ; I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and 
my blessing upon thine offspring ; and they shall spring up 
as among the grass, as willows by the water courses." — Isa. 
xliv, 3, 4. It is the descent of the rain from heaven, 
penetrating the earth, and converting its deadness into 
life, abundance, and beauty. 

Herein the rites in question stand in beautiful contrast 
with the self-washings of the law. The latter accomplished 
a surface cleansing, by a process which neither could, nor 
was designed to penetrate the substance, or to affect its 
essential state or nature. They indicated to God's people 
the duty of conforming the external life to the grace 
wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit. But the rite 
of sprinkling represented the rain of God, sent down from 
heaven, penetrating the soil, pervading and saturating it, 
converting its hard, dead, and sterile clods into softness, 
life, and fertility, and causing the plants and fruits of the 
earth to spring forth, saturated with the same moisture, 
and thus possessed and pervaded with the same spirit of 
life. Thus was typified the work of the Spirit, entering, 
pervading, and softening the stony heart, converting all its 
powers and faculties as instruments of holiness to God, 
and causing the plants of righteousness to spring up and 
grow in the life and conduct. 

The two words, sprinUe, and pour, are used throughout 
the Scriptures with reference to the same figure of rain, 
the only apparent difference being that the word, pour, ex- 
presses the idea of abundance. No phenomenon of nature 



Sec. XXL] THE FIGURE IS FROM THE RAIN. 89 

is of greater manifest importance, or more pervasive and 
vital in its influences than the rain of heaven, and none 
more suitable to illustrate the method of grace. The land 
from which the rains are withheld is without fruit, or 
beauty, or attraction. It is given over to barrenness, , 
death, and cursing; and, in the language of the Scriptures, 
is accounted unclean, as being shut out from the favor of 
God, whose favor is life. Hence, the word of God, to the 
prophet, concerning Israel: "Son of man, say unto her, 
Thou art the land that is not cleansed, nor rained upon, in 
the day of indignation." — Ezek. xxii, 24. Similar is the 
significance of our Savior's w^ords: "When the unclean 
spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places" 
(anhudron topon, "waterless places"), places congenial to 
him because unblessed with the Spirit's presence. (Matt. 
Txii, 43; Luke xi, 24.) 

Illustrations from the Scriptures might be multij^lied, 
showing this origin of the form of baptism. Isaiah says 
of the blessings to be bestowed on Israel in the latter 
days, that the times of desolation shall continue "until 
the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wild- 
erness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted 
for a forest." — Isa. xxxii, 15. In another place he cries, 
"Drop down, ye heavens from above, and let the skies 
pour down righteousness; let the earth open, and let them 
bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up to- 
gether; I the Lord have created it." — Isa. xlv, 8. Hosea 
says of him: "His going forth is prepared as the morning; 
and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and 
former rain unto the earth." — Hosea vi, 3. And again, 
"Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in m«rcy; break 
up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, 
till he come and rain righteousness upon you." — lb. x, 12. 
The whole conception thus unfolded is assailed and re- 
pudiated by writers Avho assume that physical phenomena 
can not be used to set forth spiritual realities. Dr. Carson 



90 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 

insists that " Baptism can not be either pouring or clipping, 
for the sake of representing the manner of the conveyance 
of the Holy Spirit, for there is no such likeness. Pouring 
of the Spirit is a phrase which is itself a figure, and not 
a reality to be represented by a figure."* The learned doc- 
tor has confounded himself with his own subtlety. On the 
day of Pentecost, there was a blessed "reality" of some 
kind experienced by the apostles and converts. There is 
no absurdity, such as he imagines, in the supposition that 
the pouring or sprinkling of water may be an appropriate 
physical representation and symbol of that spiritual reality, 
and that words descriptive of that symbol may be appro- 
priate for the verbal designation of the thing signified. If 
the assertion of Dr. Carson is to be accepted, it is fatal not 
to baptism only but to the other sacrament also. " Ex- 
cept ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his 
blood, ye have no life in you." — John vi, 53. Shall we 
be told that this language of our Savior " is itself a figure, 
and not a reality to be represented by a figure." Then, we 
may not eat the bread and drink the wane, to represent 
this very thing, the feeding of the soul, by faith, on Christ. 
To do so is absurd if Dr. Carson's position is sound. It is 
true that a figure of speech oj a figure of speech would be 
nonsense. But it is equally true that it is the beauty of a 
metaphor, — the figure in question, — to be susceptible of 
physical representation. Nor is there any absurdity in the 
supposition that a spiritual act may be represented by two 
co-ordinate figures, — the one a figure of physical action, 
and the other a figure of speech, descriptive of that action. 
Besides, the assertion that "baptism can not be either 
by pouring or dipping for the sake of representing the 
manner of the conveyance of the Holy Spirit ; for there is 
no such likeness," is not merely an assumption of knowl- 
edge concerning the invisible things of God Avhich no mor- 
tal can possess. But, if the language is to be understood 

* Carson on Baptism, p. 167. 



Skc. XXL] THE FIGURE IS FROM THE RAIN. 91 

in any sense pertinent to the purpose of Dr. Carson, it is a 
plain contradiction of the testimony of God himself on the 
subject. True, there is no physical outpouring predicable 
of God the Spirit. It is as true of the Doctor's own 
word ; — there is no physical ' ' conveyance of the Holy 
Spirit." Does it, therefore, follow that there is no convey- 
ance, no outpouring? He might with as good reason quib- 
ble as to the exaltation of Christ, because height and depth 
are mere relative terms, Avhich change their direction, at 
every moment of the earth's motion on its axis and its orbit. 
His objection equally applies to the entire ritual of the 
Scriptures, robs it of all spiritual meaning and renders the 
whole utterly inane and worthless. And yet, if Paul's tes- 
timony be true, the tabernacle and all the vessels of min- 
istry were ''patterns of things in the heavens." — Heb. ix, 
23. Are those heavenly things not spiritual ? Jesus him- 
self was " the Lamb of God," the forerunner, John, being 
witness. Is there any incongruity between this language, 
and the fact that the sacrificial lambs of the ritual law 
meant the same thing ? If Dr. Carson is right, all this is 
absurd. Or, is there no spn-itual truth involved in these 
figures? Either the physical analogies to wdiich the Word 
of God constantly appeals, in figures of speech and simili- 
tudes, and upon which the whole ritual system is built, do 
so correspond with the spiritual realities as to assist us to 
true conceptions of them, however inadequate, — either the 
Scriptural figures, forms, and rites were selected because 
])cst adapted to convey and illustrate the spiritual ideas de- 
signed, or we are mocked by a semblance of revelation 
which reveals nothing. The assertion cuts us oif from all 
knowledge of the spiritual world. Nay, it leaves us igno- 
rant of the very existence of angel or spirit. For, what is 
spirit, but the spiritus or breath of man, the air or wind? 
How, then, upon the theory in question, can the word ac- 
quire or convey any idea of immaterial things? Until the 
portentous innsition of Dr. Carson shall have been estab- 



92 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Fart III. 

lished by something more conclusive than mere assertion, 
the contrary will stand as the truth of God. Moreover, 
the assertion, even if admitted, does not affect in the shght- 
est degree, the argument against which it is directed. The 
fact still remains, conspicuous and unanswerable, — that, 
whatever be the reason, sprinkling and pouriag are, in the 
Scriptures, constantly used, both in ritual forms, and in 
figures of speech, to signify the bestowal of the Holy 
Spirit, by the Mediator, from his throne on high. 

Section XXII. — T/iis Ordinance meant, Life to the Dead. 

The manner of these rites, and the style of the Scrip- 
tures in connection with them are based upon the funda- 
mental fact of man's spiritual condition as by nature dead, 
by reason of the apostasy and the curse, — "dead in tres- 
passes and sins" (Eph. ii, 1, 5); "being alienated from 
the life of God" (lb. iv, 18), so that they are incapable 
of exercising any of the activities of true spiritual life unto 
God, and are, therefore, outcast as Avere the leper and the 
unclean, from the camp and society of the clean; being 
"aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from 
the covenants of promise." — lb. ii, 12. In short, the death 
which by sin, through one man, entered the world was the 
death of the soul. With reference to it, Jesus say», — "I 
am the resurrection and the life : he that believeth in me 
though he were dead, yet shall he live : aud whosoever 
liveth and believeth in me shall never die." — John xi, 25, 
26. But inasmuch as a dead soul can not sustain life in 
the body, the latter too died with the soul, in the day of 
its death. For a little time, through the mercy'of God, in 
order to salvation (2 Peter iii, 15), an expiriug struggle is 
maintained ; but it is vrith bodies ever stooping to the grave 
and irresistibly drawn downward into its yawning gulf. It 
is in view of these facts that Paul describes the old man, 
the carnal or inherited nature, as " the body of this death," 
or "this dead body;" and its works as "dead works" 



Skc. XXI l] meant life to the dead. 93 

(Heb. vi, 1; ix, 14) which he represents to be "all man- 
ner of concupiscence," or evil desires, and consequent evil 
deeds. (Rom. vii, 8-24.) Hence, the seven days' unclean- 
ness, signifying the deadness of tlie soul, and the offensive- 
ness of its works. Coincident in meaning was the defile- 
ment of things by the contagion of death. For man's sake, 
the ground itself is cursed (Gen. iii, 17), and every product 
of the earth and every possession of man upon it is involved 
in the curse, and until delivered from it, is unsanctified to 
man's use. Hence, the house, the bed, the furniture and 
utensils, were defiled by the presence of the dead and un- 
fitted for the use of the clean, the living. 

Such were the conceptions with reference to which the 
rites of Levitical baptism were ordained. They were de- 
signed to answer the question : How can these dead be 
made alive, this defilement be cleansed, and the curse lifted 
from man and the earth? They announced life to the 
dead, and the healing of their corruption. They pro- 
claimed Christ's atonement made to redeem us from the 
curse, and his Spirit given to implant in us new life and 
purge us from dead works to serve the living God. As 
the descending rain not only penetrates the soil and instils 
life into the clods and hardness, but washes^ and purges 
the surface, and gives freshness and beauty to the scenes 
of nature, cleansing the face of the impenetrable and bar- 
ren rock, — so the Spirit sent down not only penetrates the 
heart and creates new life there, but pervades the outward 
life and conduct and purifies the whole. Thus, in the one 
figure of the sprinkling or pouring of rain, are identified 
the two ideas of new life and cleansing ; and hence, thus 
taught, the cry of the psalmist, in which he identifies both 
with the sprinkled baptism. *' \yash me thoroughly from 
my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. . . . Purge me 
with hyssop, and I shall be clean : wash me, and I shall 
be whiter than snow. . . . Create in me a clean heart, O 
God, and renew a right spirit within me." — Ps. li, 2-10. 



94 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 

The same relation is recognized by Paul, who ascribes our 
salvation to " the washiiig of regeneration and renewing 
of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly, 
through Jesus Christ our Savior." — Tit. iii, 5, 6. 

In the promise of life signified in this baptism, two 
things were included under the one essential conception. 
These were, renev/ing to the soul, and resurrection to the 
body. These are as inseparably related to each other as 
are the death of the soul and of the body; and that, be- 
cause of the essential relation between those two parts, as 
identified in the one person. Christ gave himself, body 
and soul, for us, to satisfy justice ; and bought us unto 
himself in our whole being, body and soul. If the Spirit 
of life be given us, it is given both to renew our dead 
souls and to make our bodies his temples. And, says 
Paul, "If the Spirit of him that raised up Christ from 
the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the 
dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, by his spirit 
that dwelleth in you." — Rom. viii, 11. 

That this doctrine of the new life was the meaning of 
the baptismal rite, appears from many Scriptures. We 
have just seen the significant language of the psalmist. 
By Ezekiel, the Lord says to Israel : " Then will I sprinkle 
clean water upon you and ye shall be clean ; from all your 
filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A 
new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put 
within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of 
your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I 
will put my Spirit within you." — Ezek, xxxvi, 25-27. 

This view of the work of the Holy Spirit is exhibited 
very clearly in Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones, 
and the promises therewith addressed to Israel respecting 
the latter days. " Behold, O my people, I will open your 
graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and 
bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that 
I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my 



Sec. XXIII.] THE GOSPEL IN THIS RITE. 95 

people, and brought you up out of your graves, and shall put 
my Spirit in you, and ye shall live." — Ezek. xxxvii, 12-15. 

In the same sense Paul interprets the Levitical bap- 
tisms. Having designated the ordinances of which they 
formed a part as figures of the heavenly things, he says : 
"If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of a 
heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying 
of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ . . . 
purge your conscience from dead works, to serve the living 
God." — Heb. ix, 13, 14. Here he contrasts the dead works 
of the unregenerate with the living works of those who, as 
they are alive unto God, serve in newness of life him who, 
being the living God, *' is not the God of the dead, but 
of the living." — Matt, xxii, 32. Of this he recognizes the 
sprinklings to be a figure. 

The doctrine thus involved in the water of purifying 
sheds a beautiful light on one of the most interesting facts 
in the life of our Savior. Upon the death of Lazarus, 
Jesus so timed his coming as to reach Bethany on the 
fourth day. On the previous day, or, more probably, on 
that very same day, the sisters and household of Lazarus 
had been baptized with the water of purification. And 
now, as He stands by the sepulcher, the resurrection, in its 
highest sense, as including both soul and body, and render- 
ing both superior to death, is the theme of his discourse. 
"Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I 
know that he shall rise again, in the resurrection, at the 
last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and 
the life ; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, 
yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth in 
me shall never die." — John xi, 23-26. 

Section XXIII. — The Gosj^el in the Water of Separation. 

Much of the s])iritual significance of these rites has al- 
ready appeared. But in order to an adequate appreciation, 
they should be viewed in connection. 



96 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 

1. The red heifer was a sin-offering. This is denied by 
some, Avho would draw a fine distinction. Says Bishop 
Patrick: "Though this was not a sacrifice, it had some- 
thing of that nature in it , and may be called a piaculum, 
an expiatory thing, though n'othing was called korban, a 
sacrifice, but what was offered at the altar." But, (1.) 
korban does not mean a sacrifice, but a gift, a dedicated 
thing; and is used, not only to designate sacrifices and 
offerings at the altar, but even the wagons and oxen which 
the princes gave for transporting the tabernacle and its 
furniture. (Num. vii, 3.) (2.) The blood of the heifer 
was sprinkled by the priest toward the door of the sanc- 
tuary. It was thus brought into a relation to the altar 
and the mercy-seat, typically as manifest and close as 
though it had been actually sprinkled on the altar. (3.) 
The law itself expressly declares it to be a sin-offering. 
"It is a purification for sin," — Num. xix, 9. The original, 
here, is the same that is in other places literally translated, 
"It is a sin-offering."— Lev. iv, 24; v, 9, 11, 12. In this, 
its character as a sin-offering, lay the meaning of the rite 
as a purification. It represented atonement for sin, at the 
price of blood, — the blood of Christ. Hence its use in pu- 
rifying those uncleaunesses which typified moral corruption 
in its forms of in tensest malignity and deadliness. Hence 
the appeal to this meaning of the rite whicb the psalmist 
makes, in his penitence and sorrow for his crimes. "Be- 
hold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother 
conceive me. . . . Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be 
clean ; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. . . . 
Hide thy face from my sins and blot out all mine iniqui- 
ties." — Ps. li, 5, 7, 9. The Targum thus paraphrases this 
place: "Thou wilt sprinkle me, as the priest which sprink- 
leth the unclean with the purifying waters, with hyssop, 
with the ashes of an heifer, and I shall be clean." The 
same conception is apparent in God's language of grace to 
Israel, and to the nations. "Then will I sprinkle clean 



Skc. XXIII.] THE GOSPEL IN THIS RITE. 97 

water upon you and ye shall be clean: from all your filthi- 
ness and from all your idols will 1 cleanse you." And, 
'So shall he sprinkle many nations." In a word, in every 
instance in which this rite is appointed, or figuratively 
alluded to, it ^nll be found to indicate a typical impeach- 
ment of sin ; and the design and effect of its use was the 
removal of that impeachment, the cleansing of the subject. 
It was baptism unto the remission of sitis. 

2. The heifer was offered W'ithout the camp. In the 
detailed ritual of the tabernacle and temple service, the 
holy of holies, the holy place, and the surrounding court, 
typified, respectively, God's heavenly presence chamber, 
the church, and the world. In a wider scheme, the v^'hole 
sanctuary was representative of God's house, whilst the 
camp and afterward the city of Jerusalem were the figure 
of the church, and the outside region stood for the world 
at large. Hence, the unclean were excluded from the camp 
and the city. (Compare Rev. xxi, 27; xxii, 14, 15.) And 
hence, the red heifer was offered without the camp, to 
signify the reproach of Christ, wdio suffered without the 
gate, excommunicate and accursed. (Heb. xiii, 11-13.) 
The blood of the heifer, sprinkled from without toward the 
sanctuary, intimated in a very aflfecting manner, the dis- 
tance to which Christ came from yonder sanctuary in the 
heavens, to shed his blood, and therewith to sprinkle the 
throne of justice on high. 

3. Blood only was sprinkled toward the sanctuary, 
whilst it was water mingled with the blood or ashes, that 
was sprinkled on the unclean. For, his own unmingled 
blood, offered by Christ himself before the throne on high, 
and that alone, makes satisfaction to justice for sin. But 
the . Holy Spirit is the sole channel and agent through 
whom Christ bestows on his people, or they can in any 
wise acquire, the virtue of that blood in justifpng grace 
and holiness. Water, therefore, was the vehicle for com- 
municating to Israel the blood of sprinkling. 

9 



98 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Pakt III. 

4. The blood was sprinkled seven times, to show the 
complete and exhaustive efficacy of the sufferings of Christ 
to satisfy justice, sanctify the soul, and make an end of 
sin forever. 

5. He that touched the dead was defiled seven days. 
This tactual defilement typified not only the guilt and de- 
pravity which we derive from Adam, but, especially, the 
contagion of man's guilt which came on the Lord Jesus, 
by becoming the Son of man, born in our nature. Though 
he knew no sin, yet was he laden with our curse. He 
signified this very thing, when in the days of his flesh, he 
defiled himself by touching the lepers and the dead, that 
he might restore them to soundness and life, at the price 
of his own life; — "That it might be fulfilled which was 
spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our 
infirmities and bare our sicknesses." — ^Matt. viii, 17. The 
same thing was set forth by the fact that the priest that 
sprinkled the heifer's blood, each assistant at the burning 
and gathering of the ashes, and he that sprinkled the 
water of separation, all became thereby unclean until the* 
even. They, together, represented the Lord Jesus, m the 
exercise of his mediatorial office, which involved his taking 
his people's curse upon him, to free them. The seven days 
of this defilement have been already explained, as typical 
of our native condition of dej)ravity and guilt, which, if 
not purged, involves continuance and condemnation in the 
seventh, the last day, when the sentence will be uttered, 
"He that is filthy let him be filthy still."— Eev. xxii, 11. 

6. The ashes of the heifer were as familiar to the relig- 
ious life of Israel as was the blood of sacrifice. But the 
significance of the blood is so much more familiar to us, 
that a pause is here proper, to call attention to the won- 
derful propriety and instructiveness of the ashes. In the 
blood we see the penalty of sin paid, and justice satisfied. 
But it is satisfied at the price of life, and leaves death -in 
possession. But, in the ashes, Israel saw the sacrifice come 



Skc. XXIII.] THE GOSPEL IN THIS RITE. 99 

forth from the exhausted fires of justice, unconsumed and 
uncousumable. Ou them, the fire could no more take 
hold ; but, mingled with the living water, they represented 
Christ — the law satisfied and the curse exhausted in his 
blood — coming forth by the Spirit, from the expiring 
flames, robed in life and immortality. " Whom God hath 
raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was 
not possible that he should be liolden of it." — Acts ii, 24. 

7. The ashes were mingled with running water. Prior 
to the baptism of Israel at Sinai, we hear of no sacra- 
mental rite setting forth the office and work of the Holy 
Spirit. But the living water, then ordained in the divers 
baptisms of the Mosaic system, became thenceforward the 
standing representation and type of the Third Person of the 
Godhead, as the Spirit of life, shed down from heaven by 
the Mediator. 

8. The sacrificial elements and water were sprinhled on 
the unclean. Two ideas were thus symbolized; the hestow- 
ment by Christ from his throne of the virtues of his blood 
and Spirit; and, their efifectual influence upon the heart 
and conscience of him to wdiom they are given. As the 
rain descends from heaven, penetrates the soil, and makes 
it fruitful, so Christ's Spirit shed down from him takes 
possession of the inmost heart, purges it from the guilt 
of 2mst sins, and produces newness of life and the fruits 
of holiness. With reference to the mode thus employed, 
and its symbolical relation to Christ's administration of 
grace, the fact is worthy of special emphasis, that in every 
rite or figure by which was represented the exercise by 
Christ of his office as administrator in the Father's king- 
dom, the mode is affusion, whether it be blood, water, or 
oil, expressive of grace bestowed on the people of God, or 
indignation and fire poured down upon his enemies. 

9. Tlie water of separation was to be sprinkled on the 
unclean on the third day and on the seventh. "And if 
he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day 



100 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 

he shall not be clean;" for, Jesus who died under our 
curse, rose again the third day. And " Know ye not that 
so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were bap- 
tized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him 
by baptism into death ; that like as Christ was raised up 
from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also 
should walk in newness of life. For, if we have been 
planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be 
also in the likeness of his resurrection." — Rom. vi, 3-5. If 
w^e do not participate in the resurrection of Christ on the 
third day, by rising from the death of sin to the life of 
holiness, we can have no part in the resurrection and life 
of glory. So, Paul testifies to the Ephesians, that the same 
mighty power which raised Christ from the dead and set 
him far above in the heavenly places, is at work in all his 
people, and by it they who were dead in sins are quickened 
together with him, and made to sit with him in the heavenly 
places. (Eph. i, 20; ii, 6.) Hence, Paul's earnest desire 
and labor for himself, — " That I may know him, and the 
power of his resurrection, . . . if by any means, I might 
attain unto the resurrection of the dead." — Phil, iii, 10, -11. 
*' Might know the power of his resurrection," — by realizing 
within, the steady vigor of the new life in Christ Jesus, 
working holiness and grace. 

Of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, Paul says, that 
"he rose again the third day, according to the Scrip- 
tures." — 1 Cor. XV, 4. But w^here, in the Scriptures, is 
the third day thus specified ? The Lord Jesus makes a 
similar statement, which goes far to answer the question. 
" These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was 
yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were 
written in Die law of Hoses, and in the prophets and in the 
Psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understand- 
ing, that they might understand the Scriptures, and said 
unto them. Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ 
to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day." — Luke 



Src. XXIII.] THE GOSPEL IN THIS RITE. 101 

xxiv, 44-46. In another place, there is a remarkable allu- 
sion to the same thing. When Jesus, in response to the 
Jews demanding a sign, said, "Destroy this temple, and 
in three days, I will raise it up," the disciples did not un- 
derstand. But " when he was risen from the dead, they 
remembered that he had said this unto them ; and they be- 
lieved tlw Scripture, and the word that Jesus had said." — 
John ii, 18-22. It would thus appear that the resurrec- 
tion on the third day was written in the Scriptures, and the 
reference to the law of Moses, and statement as to the open- 
ing of the understanding of the apostles, as though the mat- 
ter were not jmtent on the face of the record, both lead us 
to look in that direction for the prophetic anticipation of 
the third as the resurrection day. The other Scriptures 
will be searched in vain for any thing to fulfill the require- 
ments of these statements of Christ and of Paul. The law 
concerning the sprinkling of the water of separation con- 
tains the only intimation on the subject ; and the allusions 
above cited appear undoubtedly to have had this typical 
prophecy in view. 

In the design of this ordinance, as a prophecy of the 
resurrection, we have the reason of its peculiar relation to 
that particular form of defilement which arose from con- 
tact with the dead. Although designed as has been seen 
for the cleansing of other defilements, also, it was ordained 
in immediate connection w-ith this particular uncleanuess, 
because that is the connection in which this distinctive 
meaning shines forth most clearly. 

10. He that was purified wnth the water of separation 
was required to follow it w^th an act of self-ablution. 
" On the seventh day, he shall purify himself, and wash 
his clothes and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean 
at even." — Num. xix, 19. It has been asserted that this 
rule was meant for tlie administrator of the rite. But the 
exposition afterward given by Eleazar, the priest (Num. 
xxxi, 21-24), shows this to be a mistake. The propriety 



102 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 

and beauty of the requirement, in the connection, are ap- 
parent. It was a perpetual monition to Israel that those 
who have been redeemed with precious blood, and raised 
up to new life by the Holy Spirit, should walk worthy of 
their calling, and keep themselves from the evil that is in 
the world, in the blessed assurance of being freed from all 
corruption and evil, and made partakers in the perfection 
of holiness and life, on the great Sabbath day of redemption. 

This thought was more fully developed in the rites con- 
cerning the leper. Immediately upon his baptism, he was 
required to shave his hair, wash his garments and bathe his 
flesh. The hair and the defilement adhering to the gar- 
ments and flesh Avere evident types of the outgrowth and 
fruits of his leprous life. Of the shaving and cleansing 
thus appointed, Paul may give the interpretation — "That 
ye put ofl* concerning the former conversation, the old man 
which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts." — Eph. 
iv, 22. After this, the meaning of the hke shaving and 
washing on the seventh day is apparent. It sets forth the 
final and complete putting ofl* of the old carnal nature, in 
the resurrection of life, when our bodies themselves also 
shall be transformed into the likeness of Christ's glorious 
body, and be reunited to our souls, perfected in holiness. 

11. The defilement from the dead, and the purifying 
use of the water of separation were not only incident to 
persons; but the tent or house where the dead lay, and 
every thing that was in it, became defiled, and must be 
cleansed by the water of separation, sprinkled on the third 
day, and on the seventh. (Num. xix, 14, 18; xxxi, 20, 
22, 23.) Thus were Israel taught that the curse of sin is 
on the earth, also, and all that is in it, as well as on man; 
that, only as sanctified to him through the atonement of 
Christ, can the productions and possessions of the earth be 
blessed, and that in the regeneration, the earth and the 
creatures themselves, also, shall be delivered from the 
bondage of corruption into the glorious hberty of the sons 



Sec. XXI V.J THESE THE DIVERS BAPTISMS. 103 

of God, and " Holiness to the Lord," be written on the Very 
bells of the horses. (Zech. xiv, 20.) "For," saith the 
Lord, *' behold 1 create new heavens and a new earth." — 
Isa. Ixv, 17. 

Thus, all the great truths of the Gospel, were set forth 
and symbolized in this ordinance, the last, the consummate 
and crowning sacrament of the Old Testament. 

Section XXIV. — These were the Divers Baptisms. 

That the sprinkled purifyings were the theme of Paul's 
argument is evident : 

1. He distributes the whole ritual system under two 
categories. His statement (Heb. ix, 8, 9), literally trans- 
lated, is, that " the first tabernacle," erected by Moses, was 
*^. (parahole eis ton hairon enestelcota), an illustrative simili- 
tude, unto the present time (Jcath hen^^) in accordance with 
which (similitude), both gifts and sacrifices are offered, 
which, as to the conscience, can not perfect the worshipers; 
depending only on meats and drinks and divers baptisms, — 
righteousnesses of the flesh, imposed until the time of ref- 
ormation." The word (dilcaiomata) " righteousnesses" (from 
dikaios, righteous), is repeatedly so translated in our En- 
glish version (Eom. ii, 26; v, 18; vili, 4), although in 
some other places beside the text it is rendered, — "ordi- 
nances." — Luke i, 6 ; Hob. ix, 1, 10. The latter rendering, 
however, fails to develop the true idea of the word, which 
is, — ordinances imposed, in order to the attaining of righteous- 
ness by obedience. So it should be in the first verse of this 
chapter. " Then, verily, the first covenant had also right- 
eousnesses of worship," (ritual righteousnesses), "and an 
earthly holy place." By the phrase, "righteousnesses of 
the flesh," the writer indicates the contrast between the 
outward ritual riji^hteousnesses of the law, — its circumcision 



*This readinf? is attested by codices Bezac, Alexandrimis, 
Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and is fully sustained by the internal 
evidence. 



104 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [rAUT III. 

of the flesh, its offericgs of bulls and goats, and its wash- 
ings and sprinklings with material elements, — and " the 
circumcision of the heart;" "the offering of Jesus Christ," 
and " the washing of regeneration and renewing of the 
Holy Ghost." The ritual observances fulfilled the law of 
carnal commandments, and were thus righteousnesses of 
the flesh, and figures of the true, the righteousness of 
Christ. 

Paul distributes these observances into the two cate- 
gories of offerings and purifyings. The law required each 
sacrifice to be accompanied with a meat offering made of 
fine flour mingled with oil, and a drink offering of wine. 
For the altar was God's table, where he as a Father fed 
and communed with his children. It must, therefore, be 
furnished with all the provisions of a table. (Xum. xv, 
8-5, 7, etc.) Thus, the offerings upon the altar were all 
comprehended under the two heads of meats (bromasi, 
soHd food) , and drinks, — nourishments for the body. Paul's 
other category is, the divers baptisms. These, of neces- 
sity, are the purifying rites of the Levitical system. For, 
he describes the whole system as including " only meats 
and drinks and divers baptismis;" whereas all were actu- 
ally comprehended under the two heads of offerings, which 
symbolized atonement made, and purifyings, representing 
its apphcation, to the purging of sins. That it is of the 
purifpngs that he now speaks, is evident not only from 
the meaning of baptism, itself, but from the whole tenor 
of his argument, which is directed exclusively to the two 
points just indicated, atonement made, and purification 
accomplished. 

2. The baptisms of which the apostle speaks were pur- 
ifyings of persons and not of things. They were righteous- 
nesses of the flesh, upon which men in vain relied for the 
purging of their consciences, (vs. 9, 14.) 

3. There were but two ordinances to which Paul can 
possibly refer. Except the sprinklings, and the self- 



Sec. XXIV.] THESE THE DIVERS BAPTISMS. 105 

performed washings, there was no rite in the Levitical 
system in which water was used, or to which the name of 
baptism is, or can be, attributed, with any pretense of rea- 
son or probabihty. 

4. The self-washings will be examined presently. As 
compared with the sprinklings, they were of minor impor- 
tance. Separately used only for superficial defilements, 
they purged no essential corruption. They were without 
sacrifice, administrator, or sacramental meaning. They 
symbolized no work of Christ, signified no bestowal of 
grace, and sealed no blessing of the covenant. In all this, 
they stood in eminent contrast with the sprinkled rites. 
To suppose that Paul, in a discussion which has respect to 
the cleansing efficacy of Christ's blood and Spirit, and the 
Levitical types of it, should refer to the minor rite of self- 
washing, which did not symbolize those things, and by an 
exclusive ^' only" reject from place or consideration the 
sprinklings which did, is absurd ; as it is, moreover, to 
suppose that, in such an argument, the latter would not, 
of necessity, have a paramount place and consideration. 

5. This conclusion is fully confirmed upon a critical ex- 
amination of the connection of Paul's argument. The 
"meats and drinks and divers baptisms" he characterizes 
as "righteousnesses of the flesh," in confirmation of the 
assertion just made, that they could not " perfect," or 
purify the conscience of the w^orshiper. He then, imme- 
diately, presents in contrast the atonement of Christ. 
"They," says he, "depended only on meats and drinks and 
divers baptisms, righteousnesses of the flesh imposed until 
the time of reformation. But Christ being come, . . . 
neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own 
blood he entered in once into the holy place, having ob- 
tained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulk 
and of goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, 
sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more 
shall the blood of Christ . . . purge your conscience." 



106 ADMINISTERED BAPTISMS. [Part III. 

Thus, in immediate exposition of his statement as to divers 
baptisms, the apostle specifies the two most conspicuous 
forms of the sprinklings of Sinai, that of the whole peo- 
ple, upon the making of the covenant, and that adminis- 
tered with the water of separation — the one being the 
original of the ordinance, and the other its ordinary and 
perpetuated form. For, that there may be no mistake as 
to his reference, in speaking of the blood of bulls and of 
goats, he proceeds, a little farther on to describe particu- 
larly its use in the Sinai baptism: "For when Moses had 
spoken every precept to all the people according to the 
law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, 
and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book 
and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the testa- 
ment (the covenant), which God hath enjoined unto you." — 
Vs. 19, 20. As we examine Paul's argument throughout 
the chapter, we find his attention directed, from first to 
last, to the sprinklings of the law alone, while the self- 
washings are not once named nor alluded to. This, after- 
wards, 'very signally appears in that magnificent contrast 
of Sinai and Sion, in which he sums up the whole argu- 
ment of the epistle. The crowning feature in the attrac- 
tions of Sion is "the blood of sprinkling that speaketh 
better things than that of Abel." — Heb. xii, 24. In the 
presence of it the self- washings are not counted worthy to 
be named. 

6. The manner in which, in the next chapter, self- 
washing is at length introduced is a singular confirmation 
of the view here taken. So long as the Avriter is occupied 
in the argument as to Christ's work of expiation, he makes 
no allusion to the self-washings. But when he proceeds 
to urge upon his readers the practical plea which his argu- 
ment suggests, he does it by referring to the two rites, 
in the relation to each other which we have indicated. 
"Having, therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the 
holiest, by the blood of Jesus, . . . and having a High 



Sicc. XXIV.] THESE THE DIVERS BAPTISMS. 107 

Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true 
heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled 
from an evil conscience, and our own bodies washed with 
2)ure water." — Heb. x, 19-22. To an unclean person, de- 
siring to claim the privileges of the sanctuary, the require- 
ment of the law was, Let him be sprinkled on the third 
day and on the seventh, to set forth Christ's and the Spirit's 
grace; and then, let him wash himself, in token of the 
maintaining of personal holiness. From the rites which 
he has been discussing, Paul's exhortation t;akes form, and 
in them finds interpretation. 

The conclusion is evident. Had Paul meant by the 
phrase in question to designate the self-washings, they were 
by affusion, and it would follow that that is the mode of 
baptism. But that his reference was distinctively and 
emphatically to the sprinkled—rites is beyond candid contra- 
diction. We, therefore, plant ourselves upon this impreg- 
nable position, and challenge assault. For ffteen hundred 
years of the church's history, baptism ivas uniformly adminis- 
tered by sprinkling. It was so administered down to the 
time of Christ. It was so administered in the time of Paul. 
The word does not then mean to dip or to immerse; for, 
Paul being witness, the rite was not so performed. Had 
we no further evidence, this should be conclusive. 



108 RITUAL SELF- WASHINGS. [Part IV. 



Part IV. 

THE RITUAL SELF- WASHINGS. 

Section XXV. — Unclean until the Even. 

THE clean, that is those who had been purified by 
sprinkling, were liable to contract certain minor de- 
filements, which were characterized by continuing until the 
even. Of these there were two classes. First, were those 
which resulted from participation in expiatory rites. 
Among the most conspicuous examples of this class were 
the uncleanness of the priests and assistants by whom the 
red heifer was sacrificed, the ashes collected and the water 
of separation sprinkled on the unclean. These all were, 
by participation in those rites, rendered unclean until the 
even, and were required to wash their clothes, and bathe 
their flesh, in order to their cleansing. (Num. xix, 7, 8, 
10, 21.) The meaning of this is evident. The red heifer 
was a sacrifice of expiation, " a purification for sin." — lb. 9. 
In it, the priests and assistants and he that sprinkled the 
ashes, with the heifer itself, together, constituted a complex 
type of the Lord Jesus, offering himself a sacrifice to jus- 
tice, sprinkling the altar in heaven with his own blood, 
and applying it with his Spirit to his people for the puri- 
fying of their uncleanness. The defilements for which the 
ashes of the heifer were provided were typical of our 
native depravity and death in sin and the curse. From 
these, Christ freed his people, by being himself made a 
curse for them (Gal. iii, 13), dying in their stead, that 
they might live. To represent this the priests, assist- 
ants, and administrator of the water of separation, became 
defiled, by participation in the cleansing rites. The same 



Sec. XXV.] UNCLEAN TILL THE EVEN. 109 

explanation applies to the defilement which the high priest 
and others incurred by participation in the observances of 
the day of atonement. (Lev. xvi, 24, 26.) 

The curse under which the Lord Jesus came exhausted 
itself on his natural life, and expired as he rose from the 
dead. Of the period during which he bore its burden, 
and fulfilled his atoning work, he himself says: "I must 
work the works of him that sent me, vMU it is day; the 
night Cometh, when no man can work." — John ix, 4. And 
on the night of the betrayal he said to the Father, "I 
have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." — lb. 
xvii, 4. It thus appears that a day is a symbol of the 
period of man's natural life, the period during which the 
Lord Jesus was under the curse. Hence the typical un- 
cleanness of the priests and assistants was limited to the 
even of the day on which it was incurred. It was removed 
by self-washing ; for it was by his own power and Spirit 
that Christ threw off the curse and rose from the dead. 
(Rom. viii, 2, 11; John x, 17, 18.) 

2. The other class of uncleannesses until the even arose 
from the more or less intimate contact of the clean with 
persons or things that were unclean in the higher degree ; 
or from other causes essentially similar in meaning. De- 
filements resulting from expiatory rites symbolized the 
putative guilt incurred by the Lord Jesus, in making 
atonement for us; while he ever remained, in himself, 
"holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners." — Heb. 
vii, 26. But the forms of uncleanness now under exami- 
nation resulted from contact with things that were typical 
of the debasement, corruption, and depravity of the world. 
The uncleanness hence arising signified the spiritual defile- 
ment to which God's people are liable from contact M'ith 
evil. Hence, the grades of defilement, consequent upon 
the closeness and fellowship of the contact, and the nature 
of the uncleanness with which it took place. These were 
designed to teach the lesson with which James crowns his 



110 RITUAL SELF-WASHINGS. [Part IV. 

definition of pure religion and undefiled. "To A«ep him- 
self unspotted from tlie world." — James i, 27. The same 
idea is presented by the beloved John. "We know that 
whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is be- 
gotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one" (that 
" unclean spirit," the representative and source of all moral 
evil) " toucheth him not" (to defile him, as w^ould the 
touch of the leper or the unclean). "And we know that 
we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness." 
-Literally, — " lieth in that v>'icked one," — in his bosom, and 
the defilement of his contact and communion. (1 John v, 
18, 19.) And, again, "Beloved, now are we the sons of 
God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we 
know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him ; for 
we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this 
hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." — 1 John 
iii, 2, 3. 

Fronr many such Scriptures, the meaning of these un- 
cleannesses and of the self-washings is easily gathered. 
The defilements which they symbolized are not of a radical 
nature, but extrinsic and superficial. They represented 
those spiritual defilements, — those soilings of heart and 
conscience to which God's people are subject through con- 
tact and intercourse with an ungodly world. It is postu- 
lated only of those whose hearts have already been quick- 
ened and sanctified by the blood and Spirit of Christ, 
" once for all" (Heb. x, 10); and who are "the habitation 
of God through the Spirit." They do not require a new 
atonement and renewing of the Spirit, but the exercise 
of the graces of that Spirit which is already in them. For 
their cleansing, therefore, no new sacrificial rites nor ofift- 
cial administrator were appointed ; but they were required 
to wash themselves. This did not prohibit the employment 
of any customary assistance in the washing ; as, for exam- 
ple, that of a servant pouring water on the hands. But 
such assistance, if employed, was merely ministerial, and 



Sec. XXVI.] GRADATION OF SELF-WASHINGS. Ill 

not official. The washing, however performed, was the 
duty and act of the subject of it, and therein lay its sig- 
nificance. Its language was that of the apostle: "Hav- 
ing, therefore, these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse 
ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfect- 
ing holiness in the fear of God." — 2 Cor. vii, 1. 

The termination of the defilement, upon the perform- 
ance of the appointed self-washing, with the going down 
of the sun, certified the deliverance of God's people from 
sin and corruption, with the end of this present life, in the 
coming rest of the believer's grave, awaiting the seventh 
day of resurrection and glory. 

Section XXVI. — Gradation of the Self washings. 

There was a noticeable gradation in the self-washings. 

1. First was the washing of the hands, alone. This 
was required of the magistrates expiating a concealed mur- 
der. (Deut. xxi, 6.) It is also indicated in Leviticus xv, 11. 
It will be further examined hereafter. The figure of 
washing the hands, as expressive of innocence and purity, 
occurs repeatedly in the Scriptures ; and as the hands are 
the ordinary instruments of the actions and labors of life, 
the meaning of the figure is very manifest. Says Job, in 
his complaint to God, " If I wash myself with snow water, 
and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge 
me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me." — 
Job ix, 30, 31. That is, " Though I give the utmost heed 
to conform my whole life and conduct to the requirements 
of thy holiness, yet, in the severity and penetration of thy 
judgment, thou \s\\i discover and reveal me to myself as 
utterly unclean." The psalmist has recourse to the same 
figure, in a happier spirit. "I will wash mine hands in 
innocency, so will I compass thine altar, O Lord ; that I 
may publish with tlie voice of thanksgiving, and tell of 
all thy wondrous works." — Ps. xxvi, 6, 7. 

2. Next in the order of these observances was the 



112 RITUAL SELF-WASHINGS. [Part IV- 

ordinance requiring tlie priests to wash their hands and feet 
in preparation for the duties of their ministry at the sanc- 
tuary. This will be discussed hereafter. 

3. In certain milder forms of uncleanness till the even, 
the person was required to wash his clothes, merely. This 
rule applied to such as he that ate or slept in a house shut 
up on suspicion of leprosy (Lev. xiv, 47) ; and he that 
carried an unclean carcase, or ate unclean flesh. (Lev xi, 
25, 28, 40.) From the time when our first parents, in the 
conscious nakedness of guilt, made themselves aprons of 
fig-leaves, which the Lord replaced with coats of skms, the 
garments had a recognized significance, which is traceable 
long before the giving of the law ; and, running through 
all the Scriptures, gives form to the imagery of the last 
book of all. When Jacob, on his return from Chaldea, 
was required by God to go to Bethel and erect an altar, 
he called on his household and followers to be clean and 
change their garments (Gen. xxxv, 2) ; that is, to put 
off their soiled garments and put on clean. So, at Sinai, 
in prej^aration for its transactions, Moses was directed to 
"sanctify the people to-day and to-morrow, and let them 
w^ash their clothes." — Ex. xix, 10, 14. 

A few other Scriptures will develop the meaning of this 
symbol. In the vision of Zechariah : " He showed me 
Joshua the high-priest, standing before the angel of the 
Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him. 
And the Lord said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke thee, O 
Satan ; even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke 
thee: Is not this a brand plucked out. of the fire? Now 
Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and stood before 
the angel. And he answered and spake to those that stood 
before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from 
him. And unto him he said, Behold I have caused thine 
iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with 
change of raiment." — Zech. iii, 1-4. "Others save with 
fear," says Jude, " pulhng them out of the fire; hating 



Sec. XXVI.] GRADATION OF SELF-WASHINGS. 113 

even the garment spotted by the flesh." — ^Jude 23. With 
this compare the definition of '* pure religion and unde- 
filed," — " to keep himself unspotted from the world." — 
Jas. i, 27. '' Thou hast a few names even in Sardis, which 
have not defiled their garments ; and they shall walk with 
me in white; for they are worthy." — Eev. iii, 4. In his 
visions, John saw the souls of them that were slain for 
the word of God, and a great multitude out of every na- 
tion, " clothed with white robes." And the angel told 
him, ''These are they that have washed their robes, and 
made them white in the blood of the Lamb." — lb. vi, 11 ; 
vii, 9, 14. "Behold I come as a thief. Blessed is he that 
watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, 
and they see his shame." — lb. xvi, 15. To the bride, the 
Lamb's wife, it "was granted that she should be arrayed 
in fine linen, clean and white ; for the fine linen is the 
righteousness of saints."- — lb. xix, 8. Literally, " is the 
righteousnesses of the saints." 

From these Scriptures, it is evident: that clean or 
white garments primarily and essentially mean, the right- 
eousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, in which his people are 
robed, so that the shame of their spiritual nakedness may 
not appear (Rev. iii, 18; vii, 14; Phil, iii, 8, 9); that 
keeping them clean, or unspotted, means, the maintain- 
ing of that watchful holiness of heart and life which is 
becoming those who have been bought and robed as are 
Christ's people ; and that washing the garments signifies 
recourse to the blood and Spirit of Christ, as the only and 
eficctual means of making and keeping them free from 
defilement. 

4. In certain cases, the unclean until the even were re- 
quired to wash their clothes and bathe their flesh. The 
characteristic examples of this observance, are those who 
had carried or touched any thing on which one defiled with 
an issue had sat or lain. (Lev. xv, 5, 6, etc.) _ A careful 
examination of this class, in comparison with the preceding, 

10 



114 RITUAL SELF-WASHINGS. [Part IV. 

proves them to be essentially one in meaning, the difference 
being mainly if not entirely in degree. The defilement in 
the present case was aggravated by the fact that its cause 
was symbolical of man's depravity, breaking out in active 
corruption and transgression. On the other hand, the un- 
clean animals, from which the milder form of this unclean- 
ness was contracted represented the evil of man's nature, 
simply as native and indwelling, Avithout the active ele- 
ment of outbreaking depravity and wickedness. Hence, 
the difference, in requiring the w^ashing of both the flesh 
and the garments, was designed to give emphasis to the 
admonition conveyed; and to teach the additional lesson, 
that whilst all contact with the ungodly and the world is 
dangerous to the purity of Christian character, and renders 
necessary a continual recourse to the sanctifying power 
and grace of the Holy Spirit ; especially is this requisite 
in case of intimate relations with it, in its active forms of 
ungodhness and corruption, dissipation and riot. 

5. The only other class, to be enumerated under this 
head, consists of those who, in addition to other rites of 
purifying, w^ere required to shave off their hair. Such 
were lepers, in their cleansing (Lev. xiv, 8, 9) ; the Le- 
vites, upon their consecration (Num. viii, 7) ; a Nazarite, 
defiled, before the completion of his vow (Num. vi, 9) ; 
and a captive woman, chosen as a bride (Deut. xxi, 12). 
With these may be compared the Nazarite, at the comple- 
tion of his vow, although this did not belong to the cate- 
gory of purifying. The Scriptures contain no formal 
explanation of this requirement. But the nature and cir- 
camstances of the cases as compared with each other, and 
the general principles of typical analogy, indicate the inter- 
pretation. The hair of the leper, for example, was the 
product and outgrowth of his leprous state, and must there- 
fore be put off and repudiated, with his entrance (m the 
the new life of the clean. The same principle applies to 
all the other cases, except that of the Nazarite, upon the 



Bec. XXVII.] THE MODE IMPLIED. 115 

completion of his vow. His liair was the product of the 
time during which, by the consecration of his vow, all be- 
longed to God. It could not, therefore, be retained, but 
was shaved off and offered upon the altar, as holy. (Num. 
vi, 18.) In the other cases, it was cast away as unclean. 
Thus, as in all the preceding regulations, the same lesson 
is repeated, which is so needful, and to our stupidity, so 
hard to learn ; — the lesson of putting off the old man and 
putting on the new. 

Section XXVII. — Mode implied in the Meaning of the Rite. 

The instructiveness and utility of types and symbols 
consist in an appreciable analogy between them and the 
spiritual things which they are appointed to symbolize. 
In the case of the Old Testament self-washings, I suppose 
it has never entered the imagination of any one that they 
were types of the burial of the Lord Jesus. Of such 
an interpretation there is not a trace anywhere in the 
Scriptures. On the contrary, such meaning is there attrib- 
uted to them that, in order to a sustained analogy, the subject 
of the rite should, by a voluntary and active exercise of his 
own powers take and apply the water to his members and 
person, for their cleansing. In this respect, they stand in 
emphatic contrast with the sprinkled water of purifying. 
That was designed to concentrate the attention of Israel 
upon the active agency of the Mediator, in bestowing the 
baptism of his blood and Spirit, for the renewing and 
quickening of dead souls. In it, therefore, the subject was 
the passive recipient of rites dispensed by the hands of an- 
other. But the activity of the Christian life and warfare 
were symbolized by the self-washings. Christ's grace is 
given his people, not to sanction supineness and indolence ; 
but to stimulate to activity in the pursuit of holiness. As 
the Spirit is now to them an opened fountain, they are to 
have recourse to it, to seek and obtain, day by day, more 
grace, for the purging of the flesh, for overcoming the 



116 RITUAL SELF-WASHINGS. [Part IV. 

world, for bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit, for fight- 
ing the good fight of faith and laying hold on eternal life. 
This, which comprehends the whole matter of practical 
religion is urged in the Scriptures, not only by direct and 
continual admonitions, but in the use of every variety of 
figures and illustrations. It was the lesson taught, under 
the figure of self-washing. Pure water is alike adapted to 
quicken the soil, to quench the thirst, and to cleanse the 
garments and the person. But, as the water of life will 
not quench the thirst of the soul, unless we come and drink, 
neither will it purge away the defilements of evil, unless 
we take it and apply it, with diligence and labor. " Wash 
ye I make you clean ; put away the evil of your doings 
from before mine eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn to do well ; 
seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, 
plead for the widow." — Isa. i, 16, 17. The Spirit thus clearly 
indicates that self-washing signified an intense and life- 
pervasive activity, — an activity applied, in detail, to each 
particular relation and duty, so as to purge out every prin- 
ciple of evil, and conform every act to the law of holiness. 
To correspond with this meaning of the rite, its form should 
be such as to call forth the active energies of the subject, 
by the application of the water to the appointed parts and 
members of the person in detail ; and by such successive 
manipulation as is proper to secure a thorough cleansing. 
The ordinary mode of washing, among Israel, as we shall 
presently see, perfectly met these requirements ; whilst im- 
mersion would have been wholly inadequate, not to say 
directly contradictory to them, since it indicates a mere 
passive recipieiK^y, and not an active appropriation and use 
of the means of cleansing. 

Section XXVIII. — The Words used to designate the 
Washings. 

The discriminating use of words on this subject, in the 
original Scriptures is very noticeable, and is susceptible of 



Sec. XXVIII.] WORDS DESIGNATING THEM. 117 

being brought within the comprehension of any intelligent 
reader of the English version. There are three which are 
worthy of special notice. 

1. Shdtaph means, to overflow, or rush over, as a 
swollen torrent or a beating rain. Thus, — "Behold the 
Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which, as a tempest 
of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters 
overflowing,'' shall beat down the crown of pride. (Isa. 
xxviii, 2.) Again, — " Say unto them which daub with un- 
tempered mortar that it shall fall ; there shall be an over- 
flowmg shower," beating it down. (Ezek. xiii, 11-14.) 
From this, the radical meaning of the word, is derived its 
use to signify the act of washing or rinsing, by means of 
water dashed or flowed over the object. It is employed in 
application to vessels of wood and of brass (Lev. vi, 28 ; 
XV, 12), and to the hands of the unclean. (lb. xv, 11.) 
In all these places it is translated, to rinse. 

2. Kahas. The radical meaning of this verb is, to 
tread, to trample. The participle from it is used to desig- 
nate the craft of the fuller, who fulled his goods by tread- 
ing them with the feet. Hence its use to signify the 
thorough cleansing and whitening of clothing and stuffs. 
The word occurs in the Old Testament forty-six times, with 
this uniform meaning. It is used whenever the ritual 
washing of clothes is spoken of. From it a very strik- 
ing figure is derived, which appears t\vice, to indicate the 
most thorough self-cleansing, under the idea of a garment 
scoured, with "nitre and much soap" (Jcr. ii, 22; iv, 14), 
and twice, to indicate a like thorough cleansing wrought by 
the Holy Spirit. " Wa^h me thoroughly from mine iniquity, 
and cleanse me from my sin. . . . Purge me with hyssop, 
and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be wdiiter than 
snow" (Psa. li, 2, 7), white, as a garment is made by the 
fuller's art. (Mark ix, 3.) These passages indicate the 
essential idea of the word. It is expressive of a scouring, 
or washing, which searches the very texture of the fabric. 



118 RITUAL SELF-WASHINGS. \Y! kxxt IV. 

It is, however, 3vor thy of notice that in the Targura of 
Onkelos, on Numbers xix, 19, it is rendered, "to sprinkle." 
"Tlie clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean, on the 
third day and on the seventh day; and on the seventh 
day he shall be clean ; and he ^liall sprinkle his raiment, 
and wash v/iih water, and at even he shall be clean." 
This rendering is very noteworthy, as it indicates the man- 
ner in which the law w^as understood on this point. In 
fact, as we have already seen, sprinkling signified the most 
thorough cleansing. 

Bdhatz. While kdhas indicates a purifying of the sub- 
stance, rdhatz signifies a washing of the surface. This is 
the word which is invariably used to express the ritual 
self- washings or bathings of the hands, the feet, and the 
person. It is sometimes assumed that, like the English, 
to wash, rdhatz is strictly generic in its meaning — that it 
signifies to cleanse with, or in, water, without any regard 
to mode. This is an error, as a single fact shows. It is 
never used for the cleansing of skins,, clothes, or garments. 
Nor is this an accidental omission. Such washings are 
mentioned nearly fifty times, and in nineteen places they are 
brought into connection with the bathing of the person. 
But in no one place is the word in question used either 
generically, as comprehensive of both the person and gar- 
ments, or specifically for the latter. In every place where 
the two processes come in the same connection, the lan- 
guage is accurately discriminated. The directions are, to 
wash, or scour (kdbas), the clothes, and to bathe (rdhatz) 
the filesh. This word occurs over seventy times. In five 
or six places, it applies to the washing of sacrificial flesh, 
before it was placed on the altar. (Lev. i, 9, 13, etc.) 
In every other instance it refers to ih^ human person. It 
expresses cleansing with water actively applied to the sur- 
face. Thus, when Joseph ^'ivashed his face," to obliterate 
the traces of tears (Gen. xliii, 31), and when the Beloved 
is described, ''His eyes, as the eyes of doves by the rivers 



Skc. XXIX.] CUSTOMS AS TO ABLUTION. 119 

[rivulets] of -waters, ivashed with milk and fitly set" (Cant. 
Y, 12), the reference is clearly to the familiar mode of 
Avashiug the face with water applied. AVhen the Lord, by 
Isaiah, speaks of the time when he "shall have washed 
away the filth of the daughters of Zion" (Isa. iv, 4), and 
when the Preacher describes "a generation that are pure 
in their own eyes, and yet is not ivashed from their filthi- 
ncss" (Prov. xxx, 12), the idea presented is the same — 
that of water actively applied to the surface, so as to de- 
tach and carry off the dirt. In another 2:>lace this defini- 
tion is even more imperatively indicated. "Then (rdhatz) 
washed I thee with water; yea (shdtaph), 1 thoroughly 
washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee 
with oil." — Ezek. xvi, 9. Here three things unite to de- 
termine the meaning of rCdmtz. 1. It is explained by 
shdtaph, the signification of which we have seen. 2. The 
defilement from which the washing is promised, is that of 
nidda, for which expressly the sprinkled "water of nidda" 
was appointed and named. 3. The construction is pre- 
cisely the same in the two clauses of the verse, " I w^ashed 
thee with water," and "I anointed thee ivith oil." Of the 
mode of the latter there can be no question. In both 
clauses the element named is the instrument of the action 
specified. The ideas of washing and of immersion are 
not merely different, but sharply contrasted Avith each 
other. "Where there is an immersion, there may also be a 
washing. But it must be by additional action. Bcdiatz 
expresses the latter. It neither expresses nor implies the 
former. 

Section XXIX. — The Mode of Domestic Ablution. 

The customs of Israel as to personal ablution would, it 
is evident, decide the manner of these self-washings, in the 
absence of explicit directions. The indications in their 
history are very decisive on this point. 

1. The patriarchs were keepers of cattle, dwelling in 



120 ^RITUAL SELF-WASHINGS. [Part IV, 

tents. The circumstances of such a mode of life forbid 
the supposition that they were accustomed to the use of 
the immersion bath. The possession, the transportation, 
and the use of the requisite vessels, are wholly foreign to 
that mode of life. 

2. Facts in the history of the patriarchs confirm the 
correctness of the inference thus indicated. Although in 
later ages, after Palestine had been pierced with wells, 
water was abundant for all the uses incident to the mode 
of life of the people, the contrary was true, m earlier 
times. Surface streams are of rare occurrence. The sub- 
stratum is a cavernous limestone, into the cavities of 
which the rains quickly percolate. Hagar and Ishmael 
were in danger of perishing of thirst, when sent away by 
Abraham. (Gen. xxi, 15.) Abraham and Isaac relied 
on digging for water; and the scarcity and value of the 
element Avere indicated by the violence with w^hich the 
other inhabitants of the country seized w^ells digged by 
each of those patriarchs. (Gen. xxi, 25; xxvi, 19-22.) 
These were usually deep, and all the water used for per- 
sonal washings, as well as for drinking and for culinary uses, 
must be laboriously drawn and carried by tlie maidens of 
the camp. We can thus see the bearing of the phrase- 
ology of Abraham in tendering his hospitality. "Let a 
little ivater, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet." — 
Gen. xviii, 4. 

3. We may safely conclude that Jacob and his family 
did not take with them into Egypt the habit of bathing 
by immersion. But may they not have acquired it in the 
land of their bondage? It happens that we have very 
interesting evidence as to the custom of the Egyptians on 
this subject. Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, in his splendid 
work on " The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyp- 
tians," gives an engraved copy of the only pictorial ii lus- 
tration on this subject found b}'- him among the abundant 
remains of Egyptian art. It is taken from a tomb in 



Sec. XXIX.] CUSTOMS AS TO ABLUTION. 121 

Thebes. In it, a lady is represented with four attendants. 
One removes the jewelry and clothes which she has put off; 
another pours water from a vase over her head : the third 
rubs her arms and body with open Imnds ; and a fourth, 
seated near her, holds a flower to her nose, and supports 
her, as she sits. "The same subject," says Wilkinson, 
"is treated nearly in the same manner on some of the 
Greek vases, the water being poured over the bather, wdio 
kneels or is seated on the ground."-^ The Greeks were 
colonists from Egypt, with which country their relations 
were ahvays intimate. And the fact, which will hereafter 
appear, that this was the only mode of domestic or in-door 
bathing, in use among them, is very significant, as to the 
customs of Egypt on the point. 

4. It is hardly necessary to insist on the utter impossi- 
bility of the Hebrew bondmen having acquired in Egypt 
more luxurious habits than those of their Egyptian task- 
masters, — habits, too, requiring much more expensive appli- 
ances, such as would be necessary for immersion-bathing. 
And, when they left Egpyt, " their kneading troughs being 
bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders" (Ex. 
xii, 34), the supposition that they had with them a suffi- 
cient supply of bath tubs to serve for the continual immer- 
sions whick, upon the Baptist theory, the Levitical law 
demanded, does not need to be controverted. In fact, the 
customary mode of washing, among Israel, as traceable in 
all their history, was precisely that which we have seen in use 
among the patriarchs and the Egyptians. It was, with water 
poured on, and the necessary rubbing by the bather him- 
self, or by an attendant. This custom was universal in 
Israel and tliroughout the east, from the earliest ages. At 
first, the only utensil used was a pitcher or jar, out of which 
the water was poured. A case before referred to in the 
history of Abraham illustrates the circumstances and man- 
ner of this usage. As he sat in his tent door, in the heat 

* Wilkinson, vol. iii, p. 388; Abridged edition, ii, 349. 
11 



122 RITUAL SELF-WASHINGS. [Part IV. 

of the day, he saw three men approach. He ran to salute 
them, and said, "Let a httle water be fetched, and wash 
your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree." — Gen. xviii, 
1-4. The washing was done in the open air, and the earth 
received the flowing water. In the same region, the Dead 
Sea expedition found the same custom among the tent- 
dwelling Arabs. On one occasion, " having as usual sub- 
mitted to be stared at and their arms handed about and 
inspected, as if they Avere on muster, water was brought 
and poured upon their hands, from a very equivocal water 
jar; after which followed the repast."* 

So long as the simplicity of tent life was maintained, 
this was all-sufiicient. But, afterward, the convenience of 
a bowl or basin was added, which was so placed as to catch 
the water, as it flowed off*, in Avashing, thus preventing the 
wetting of the floor. The water, once used, was not ap- 
plied a second time, but rejected, as being defiled. The 
examples of Bathsheba and Susanna indicate that, in bath- 
ing the person, even in the later times, the primitive custom 
still so far survived that resort was sometimes had to a 
retired place outside the house; no doubt because of the 
inconvenience of flooding the floor with the water, as it was 
poured over the person. "The History of Susanna," (one 
of the Apocryphal books), dates as far back aslwo centu- 
ries before Christ. The heroine is described as an emi- 
nently modest and virtuous woman. Her husband, Joachim, 
"was a rich man, and had a fair garden adjoining his 
house." His house was a place of resort to the Jews, and 
the magistrates commonly sat there, to exercise their office. 
It was Susanna's custom to walk in the garden at noon, 
after the people had left the house. Two of the elders are 
described as plotting against her. "And it fell out, as they 
watched a fit time, she went in as before with two maids 
only, and she was desirous to wash herself in the garden ; 
for it was hot. And there was nobody there save the two 
* Lynch's Dead Sea Expedition, p. 206. 



Sec. XXIX.] CUSTOMS AS TO ABLUTION. 123 

elders, that had hid themselves and watched her. Then 
she said to her maids, Briug me oil aud washing balls, and 
shut the garden doors, that I may wash. Aud they did 
as she had bade them, and shut the garden doors, and 
went out themselves at private doors, to fetch the things 
that she had commanded them." Her purpose is prevented 
by the appearance of the two elders, from whose false accu- 
sation she is in the sequel rescued by the famous ''judgment 
of Daniel." The same custom is illustrated by the case of 
Pharaoh's daughter at the finding of Moses, and by the 
Egyptian picture, from Wilkinson. A signal proof of the 
prevalence of the custom of washing with water poured 
on by an attendant, presents itself, in the fact that the 
designation of a body servant, or personal attendant, was 
derived from it. Elisha the prophet had been the minister 
or attendant of Elijah, before the translation of the latter. 
Of this relation, king Jehoshaphat was informed by the 
statement that it was he " which poured water on the hands 
of Elijah."— 2 Kings iii, 11. 

The circumstances render it certain that this was the 
form of washing in the expiation of a concealed murder. 
The elders of the nearest city were required to take an un- 
broken heifer down into a rough and uncultivated valley 
or gorge, and there, in the presence of the priests, strike 
off its head, wash their hands over the carcass, and call 
God to witness their innocence in the matter. Thus, the 
water flowing from their hands upon the carcass, transferred 
to it and the barren spot where it lay the putative guilt 
of the crime. (Deut. xxi, 3-9.) 

From this ordinance, the form seems to have become a 
familiar mode of protesting innocence of crime, and is mem- 
orable for that occasion when Pilate " took water and 
washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am inno- 
cent of the blood of this just person : see ye to it." — Matt, 
xxvii, 24. Two primitive representations of this scene, in 
sculptured rehef, have been found in the catacombs at 



124 RITUAL SELF- WASHLNGS. [Pakt IV. 

Rome. They date from the first centuries of the Christian 
era. In them the wife of Pilate appears in the background, 
with averted face. An attendant holds a vase or pitcher 
in one hand, and in the other a bowl : while Pilate sits 
rubbing his hands. The position of the bowl shows it to 
be empty. ' ' The mode of washing implied in the empty 
bowl is characteristic. In the east, the water is still poured 
from the vase over the hands, and caught in the bowl, so 
that it should not pass over them twice."* 

The manner of washing the feet is illustrated by a fact 
in the life of our Savior. At dinner, in the house of Simon, 
the Pharisee, a woman that was a sinner " brought an ala- 
baster box of oiutment and stood at his feet, behind him, 
weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, aud did 
w^pe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, 
and anointed them with the ointment." — Luke vii, 37, 38, 
44. But how was it possible for the woman, coming be- 
hind him at table, to get access to his feet : wdiich, accord- 
ing to our custom, would be concealed under the table? 
The ordinary mode of sitting, in the east, then as now, 
was, on the ground or floor, squat, cross-legged, or re- 
clining. Chairs were not in common use, but were re- 
served for purposes of state, and used almost exclusively 
by dignitaries. In later times a bench or settee was intro- 
duced, which was without a back. Whether on it or the 
fl.oor, the usual position, in eating Avas the same. The 
guests reclined on the left elbow, leaving the right hand 
free. The person next on the right thus leaned toward or 
against the breast of him who was at the head. (John 
xiii, 23.) The feet were draw^n up behind. Persons who 
wore sandals, always, on entering a house, left them at the 
door. These were not ordinarily w^orn by the common peo- 
ple, but only upon occasions of special travel ; and our Sa- 
vior, therefore, forbade his disciples to take time to provide 

•■■ Maitland's "Church of the Catacombs," p. 261. Also, 
Withrow's " Catacombs," p. 333. 



Skc. XXIX.] CUSTOMS AS TO ABLUTION. 125 

them, in the haste of the mission on wliich he first sent 
them to preach. (Matt, x, 10 ; Luke x, 4.) They poorly 
protected the feet from the soiling and roughness of the 
way.* Decency, therefore, and comfort both, — especially 
in the case of guests coming from a distance, required that 
the feet should be washed, immediately upon entrance, and 
the addition of oil or ointment was not only agreeable, 
for the perfumes commonly mixed with it, but very sooth- 
ing and grateful to the weary and excoriated feet. It was 
one of the first obligations of hospitality to provide for this 
washing of the feet of guests. (Gen. xviii, 4 ; xix, 2 ; etc.) 
Where special respect was intended, the office was some- 
times performed by the master of the house, or his wife. 
As the guest reclined, his feet projecting over the edge of 
the seat behind him, a basin was placed beneath, so as to 
receive the flowing water, as it was poured over them. To 
this mode there is an allusion in the language of our Sav- 
ior, to Simon the Pharisee, upon the occasion just referred 
to, which is lost in our translation. " I entered thine house. 
Water upon my feet thou didst not give." — Luke vii, 44. f 
So, the night of the betrayal, Jesus took water and a towel 
and washed and wiped the disciples' feet, as they reclined ; 
and thus the w^oman came behind him at the table, and 
bedewed his feet with her tears. To this customary rite 
of hospitality Paul refers, when he describes a wddow^ — "if 
she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints' 
feet." — 1 Tim. v, 10. To it, Abigail alludes, when, in re- 



* " Several of them [Arabs of the Jordan] wore sandals, a 
rude invention to protect the feet. It was a thick piece of hide, 
confined by a thong passing under the sole at the hollow of the 
foot, around the heel, and between the great toe and the one 
which adjoins it."— Lynch's " Dead Sea Expedition," p. 282. 
These thongs were the "latchets" of Mark i, 7. 

t " 'YfJwo knl rovq TrofJac ^ov ovk £f5cj/caf." The preposition, ctt^, 
with. the accusative, means iipon, with the idea of previous or 
present motion, — to wit, (in this place,) of the water, poured 
and flowing upon the feet. 



126 RITUAL SELF- WASHINGS. [Part IV. 

sponse to David's offer of marriage, she replies, — " Behold, 
let thine handmaid be a servant, to wash the feet of the serv- 
ants of my lord." — 1 Sara, xxv, 41, If the ritual bathings 
of Israel were immersions, the mode was without precedent 
in the domestic habits of the people; as it was without 
prescription in the law. 

Section XXX. — T/ie Facilities requisite. 

Not only was the rite of immersion without precedent 
in the domestic customs of Israel. It was wholly imprac- 
ticable as an observance to be fulfilled with the frequency 
of the ritual washings of the law. On this point, dehcacy 
forbids unnecessary detail. But an examination of the 
various requirements on the subject of uncleanness, and 
especially as contained in the fifteenth chapter of Leviticus, 
will establish the fact that recourse to those washings, was 
a matter of constant, — almost daily, — necessity, in every 
household, and for both men and women. In order to ful- 
fil these obligations, the supposition that immersion was 
the. mode would render two things imperatively necessary 
in every family, — a very large supply of water; — and a 
capacious bath-tub or tank in which the immersions might 
be performed. As to these points, but few words are nec- 
essary. The people of Israel did not usually live on their 
lands in the country ; but, like all other populations of the 
east, were gathered in towns and villages, to which they 
resorted at night; going forth in the day-time to their 
labors in the field. This mode of life was rendered neces- 
sary to avoid exposure to the depredations of bands of 
wandering marauders; and was equally congenial to the 
social disposition and habits of the people. The population 
of each village was accustomed to depend, for the supply 
of water, upon a well to which all resorted, and which was 
usually near the gate of the village. From this source, 
each household was supplied ; the water being carried in 
pitchers, or jars, on the shoulders of the females of the 



Sec. XXX.] THE FACILITIES REQUISITE. 127 

family.* It is unnecessary to protract argument. The 
facts are of themselves conclusive. The washings can not 
have been immersions. 

This conclusion is confirmed by the absence of vessels 
of any kind suited to the performance of such a rite. 
Neither in the Old Testament nor the New, neither in the 
Apocrypha, Philo, nor Josephus is there any mention of 
such facilities, or such a rite^ nor allusion to them. In 
fact, with all the advantages and appliances of modern 
civilization, there is not, and there never was a people on 
the globe of whom one in a hundred could comply with 
the law of Moses, if interpreted in the Baptist sense. 
And it is certain that no primitive people ever adopted 
that mode of domestic bathing — a mode which impHes a 
very great advance in luxury and its appliances. The 
Greeks themselves did not use it, except as they sometimes 
resorted to rivers and streams. In their arrangements for 
bathing, domestic and public, the immersion bath was un- 
known until introduced with the luxury of imperial Rome. 
In Homer's description of the bath of Ulysses in the pal- 
ace of Circe, the hero is described as seated in a vessel 
which contained no water, but was designed to receive 
that which was poured over him; and the bathing was 
performed in a manner identical with that which we have 
seen practiced in Egypt. In the remains of antique Greek 
art, the bath is frequently represented. But the mode is 
invariably the same. The bather is' placed hedde the ves- 
sel containing the water, which is taken thence in a dipper 
or jar, and poured over him.f 

Homer's description of the bath of Ulysses is thus ren- 
dered by Bryant: 

A nymph— "the fourth 
Brought water from the fountain, and beneath 
A massive tripod kindled a great fire, 

*Gen. xxiv, 13, — ; Ex. ii, 15-10; Judges v, 11 ; Ruth ii, 
1-4; 2 Sam. xxiii, 15 ; 1 Sam. ix, 11 ; John iv, 7; Matt, xx, 1-7. 

tSee Wilkinson, above quoted, and Smith's Greek and 
Roman Antiquities, article "Balnese;" and below pp. 200, 207. 



128 , RITUAL SELF-WASHINGS. [Part IV. 

And warmed the water. When it boiled, within 
The shining brass, she led me to the bath, 
And washed me from the tripod. On my head 
And shoulders, pleasantly, she shed the streams 
That from my members took away the sense 
Of weariness, unmanning body and mind."* 

Section XXXI. — The Washings of the Priests. 

Writers upon the types and symbols of the Scriptures 
too often fail to recognize or appreciate their unity, sym- 
metry, and completeness as a system, and the just propor- 
tion and propriety of each several part in its relation to 
the whole. That such must have been their character 
was impressively intimated to Israel by the emphasis with 
which Moses was admonished to "look that thou make 
them after their pattern, Avhich was shewed thee in the 
mount." — Ex. xxv, 40; xxvii, 8; Num. viii, 4. The rea- 
son of this particularity is stated by Paul. "Who serve 
unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses 
was admonished of God when he was about to make the 
tabernacle; for, See, saith he, that thou make all things 
according to the pattern showed to thee in the mount." — 
Heb. viii, 5. The tabernacle and its appurtenances were a 
systematic and luminous exposition of the plan of grace. 
Approaching it from wdthont, the first object that preseuted 
itself was the brazen altar of burnt-offering, exhibiting the 
price of redemption. Between it and the door of the tab- 
ernacle stood the laver, the pure water of which symbol- 
ized the Holy Spirit, through whom is the washing of 
regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, the essen- 
tial condition precedent to admittance to the fold of Christ. 
Entering the tabernacle, the first apartment represented 
the church on earth, the fold of the covenant. In it the 
light always shone from the seven branched golden candle- 
stick, the lamps of which, continually replenished with oil 
by the priest, symbolized the church shining as the light 
of the Avorld, through the oil of grace, the unction of the 

* Bryant's Odyssey, Book X, 429-437. 



Skc. XXXI.] WASHINGS OF THE PRIESTS. 129 

Holy Oue, raiDistered by our great High Priest. The 
table of show bread always supplied with twelve loaves, 
according to the number of the twelve tribes, set forth that 
Bread of life ever abundant for all, which nourishes the 
people of God in the earthly church, in preparation for the 
heavenly. Immediately before the veil, and before the ark 
of the covenant in the holy of holies stood the altar of in- 
cense, the fire of which, kindled with coals from the altar 
of burnt-offering, set forth the prayers of God's people, 
made acceptable and fragrant before the throne, by virtue 
of the atonement and intercession of Christ. Within the 
veil, — thin curtain between the earthly and the heavenly 
house, — the mercy seat covering the ark, and the tables of 
the covenant law enclosed therein, represented the throne 
of God's grace resting upon the firm foundation of liis 
eternal law, thus showing that mercy to man is conditioned 
upon satisfaction to that law by the blood of atonement 
sprinkled there. All the other features of the system, its 
rites and ceremonies, were constructed and ordered in a 
strictly symmetrical and congruous relation to these. A 
recollection of these points will aid in a just appreciation 
of the points involved in the present discussion. 

Of the form and dimensions of the laver, the Scriptures 
give no account, except that it stood on a foot or pedestal. 
(Ex. XXX, 18.) It was, however, of such size and propor- 
tions as to be carried about with Israel in their journey- 
ings, probably with bars, borne on the shoulders of the 
Levites, as was the altar. In preparing facilities for the 
purpose of immersion, our Baptist brethren invariably 
sink the f )nt to such a level that the minister and the 
subjects of the rite may descend into it. And this arrange- 
ment is a dictate, not of convenience only, but of decency, 
in the performance of the servnce. But, to suppose the 
laver sufficiently large and deep to serve as an immersion 
font, and then place it upon a pedestal, involves an eleva- 
tion which must have rendered it, practically, inaccessible 



130 RITUAL SELF-WASHINGS. [Paet IV. 

for such purposes, and precludes the idea that it was in- 
tended to be so used. In fact, the laver was not a bath 
tub, nor ever used as such, but a containing vessel from 
which was drawn water for all the uses of the sanctuary. 
The engravings which appear on pages 200, 207 below, 
precisely correspond with the Mosaic description of the 
laver, and probably give a very closely approximate idea 
of its form, size, and proportions. 

In the temple of Solomon, the one laver of the taber- 
nacle was replaced by a " sea of brass," and ten la vers. 
The sea was appropriated to the washings of the priests, 
whilst the lavers were used for washing the sacrifices. 
That they were used as fountains of supply, and not as 
vessels in which the sacrifices were washed, appears from 
the fact that they rested on bases four cubits square, by 
three cubits high, and were of the same proportions. (1 
Kings vii, 27, 38.) The Hebrew text gives the length, 
breadth, and height of the bases, but only the length and 
breadth of the lavers. The Septuagint and Josephus give 
the former dimensions, and add the height of the lavers — 
three cubits. Thus, the bottoms of the lavers were four 
and a half feet above the pavement on which they stood, 
and their brims, nine feet above it. They were, moreover, 
provided with wheels, so as to be removed from place to 
place, as occasion required. That the sacrifices were not 
immersed in them is evident. The Talmud states that 
they were washed upon marble tables; and this is the 
mode for which provision is made in the vision of Eze- 
kiel. (Ezek. xl, 38-43.) 

The sea of brass was ten cubits in diameter, and five 
cubits high; that is, about fifteen feet by seven and a half, 
It was elevated on twelve brazen oxen, the height of which 
is not given. But if we allow them no greater height 
than the bases of the lavers, the whole height was about 
twelve feet; a height not suggestive of convenience for 
immersions. 



Bkc. xxxl] washings of the priests. 131 

2. The brazeu sea was no part of the tabernacle furni- 
ture when God directed Moses to "bring Aaron and his 
sons unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation 
and wash them with water." — Ex. xl, 12; comp. xxix, 4. 
"And Moses said unto the congregation, This is the thing 
which the Lord commanded to be done. And Moses 
brought Aaron and his sons and washed them with 
water." — Lev. viii, 5, 6. Eespecting this, the facts are so 
evident as to admit but one conclusion. (1.) The com- 
mand given was not to immerse Aaron and his sous, but 
{rdhatz), to wash them, according to the proper meaning 
of that word, as already shown, and after the ordinary 
manner of ablution. (2.) The transaction is thrice de- 
scribed, in the places referred to above; but the laver is 
not once mentioned, nor any means of immersion. (3.) 
The place of the washing is so described as to exclude im- 
mersion. Thrice repeated, it is still, "ai the door," of the 
tabernacle. (Lev. viii, 4.) If the priests were immersed, 
on this occasion' the laver was the ouly vessel in which it 
can have been done; and, not only was it so constructed 
as to render its use impossible, but the language of the 
account is such as to conceal the fact. But here was 
no immersion. As commanded, Moses washed Aaron and 
his sons. 

3. When Moses was ordered to make the laver, its pur- 
pose was stated: "Aaron and his sons shall w^ash their 
hands and their feet thereat ; when they go into the taber- 
nacle of the congregation, they shall wash with water, that 
they die not; or, w^hen they come near to the altar, to min- 
ister, to burn offering made by fire unto the Lord. So 
they shall wash their hands and their feet, that they die 
not: and it shall be a statute for ever to them, even to 
him and to his seed throughout their generations." — Ex. 
XXX, 19-21. Not only were the priests thus to wash their 
hands and their feet, but also certain parts of the sacrifices. — 
"The priests, Aaron's sons, shall lay the parts, the head 



132 RITUAL SELF-VVASHINGS. [Paut IV. 

and the fat in order upon the wood that is on the fire 
which is upon the altar ; but his inwards and his legs shall 
he wash in water; and the priest shall burn all on the 
altar."— Lev. i, 8, 9, 13 ; viii, 21 ; ix, 14. 

Should we set aside the arguments arising from the 
meaning of the word employed, — from the customs of the 
people as to personal ablutions, — and from the form and ele- 
vation of the laver, the present facts discover an insurmount- 
able objection to the idea of immersion. Or, will it be 
insisted that the priests as they came into the sanctuary at 
the appointed times of service, successively, climbed to the 
top of the laver and, balancing on its brim, immersed their 
hands and feet; and, then, in fulfillment of their official 
duties, immersed in the water thus fouled, the inwards, or 
bowels and intestines, and the pieces of the sacrifices, about 
to be ofiered to God? The supposition Vvould be indecent 
and profane. And yet, this is the unavoidable result of 
demanding immersion, in this case. For, the same lan- 
guage is used in requiring the washing of the priests and 
of the sacrifices, and there was but one laver, to supply all 
demands for water at the sanctuary. 

4. But, again: On the day of atonement, the high 
priest was required, at a certain time in the order of observ- 
ances for the day, being alone in the sanctuary, to " wash 
his flesh with water in the holy place." — Lev. xvi, 24. 
Here, at least, there is no room for controversv. The laver 
was outside the door of the tabernacle. The priest was 
within, " in the holy place." In it, there was no vessel in 
which an immersion could take place. Immersion was not 
merely improbable. — It was impossible. The circumstances 
compel us to accept the language of the place, just as it 
stands ; and to believe that the high priest, on this occa- 
sion washed himself, and that he did so, as all washings of 
the person are performed, ''ivitJi water," as an instrumental 
means ; and that it was applied with his own hands to his 
own person. 



Skc. XXXI.] WASHINGS OF THE PRIESIS. 133 

5. Liviug or fresh water is the most familiar Scriptural 
symbol of the Holy Spirit. This is fully considered else- 
where, lu the symbolism of the tabernacle and temple, 
the water of the lavers and sea of brass was the appointed 
symbol of that blessed Person, as the source of all cleans- 
ing and sanctifying influences. In this view, the fact is 
instructive, that, in the temple of Ezekiel's vision, (Ezek. 
xl-xlviii) there was no laver; but, instead, the waters of 
the river of life flowed from the spot on which the laver 
should have stood. Jewish tradition states the laver to 
have stood on the south side of the door of the tabernacle, 
which looked toward the east. That was the position of the 
brazen sea. " He set the sea on the right side of the 
house, eastward, over against the south." — 1 Kings vii, 39. 
" On the right side of the east end, over against the 
south." — 2 Chron. iv, 10. In Ezekiel, " the forefront of the 
house stood toward the east, and the waters came down 
from under, from the right side of the house at the south 
side of the altar." — Ezek. xlvii, 1. Nor is it unworthy of 
consideration, that, if the laver was designed as a bap- 
tistery or immersion font, the living stream described by 
Ezekiel was wholly inadequate to such a purpose ; being, 
at that point, but a rivulet, not ankle deep. (lb. 3-5.) 

6. The meaning of the water, taken in connection with 
the relation which Moses, by divine appointment, sus- 
tained to Aaron, suggests the interpretaticm of the washing 
of the latter by Moses. Moses was to Aaron "instead of 
God" (Ex. iv, 16); and since Aaron's priesthood was 
typical of that of the Lord Jesus, it follows, that the 
action of Moses, in washing his brother, and then robing 
him iu the holy garments of the priesthood, was typical 
of the agency of the Father, in endowing our great High 
Priest, through the Holy Spirit, with a sinless humanity, 
(Heb. X, 5-7) and in it, investing him with the eternal 
priesthood which he now fulfills. This washing of Aaron 
is to be discriminated from his official anointing. The lat- 



134 RITUAL SELF-WASHINGS. [Part IV. 

ter signified the official gifts and qualifications of Christ, 
whilst the former had respect to his birth and growth in 
personal holiness. (Luke ii, 52.) 

7. The significance of the feet, in the figurative sys- 
tem of the Scriptures, appears in the proverb, which, among 
the things that the Lord hates, enumerates "feet that be 
swift in running to mischief." — Prov. vi, 18. On the other 
hand, the Psalmist says, — "I turned my feet unto thy 
testimonies." — " I refrained my feet from every evil way.' — 
Ps. cxix, 59, 101. The hands and feet, together, repre- 
sent, fully, the active energies of man. And the priests 
washing their hands and feet, when they came to minister 
at the altar was typical of the active righteousness of the 
Lord Jesus. This is the more apparent, when associated 
with the other fact, that in fulfilling the office for which 
they thus washed themselves, they were required, as already 
stated, to wash the inwards and the legs of the burnt oflTer- 
ings, (Lev. i, 9, 13 ; etc.) ; the inwards, or bowels repre- 
senting the afiTections, and the legs the active powers. 
Thus, the priests and the sacrifices together typified the 
essential holiness and the active obedience of the Lord Je- 
sus, " Avho, through the eternal Spirit, oflfered himself, 
without spot, to God." — Heb. ix, 14. In all this, there is 
still nothing to demand, to suggest, or allow, the idea of 
immersion. The significance of the rites accords perfectly 
with all the other irresistible indications, which lead us to 
the conclusion that under no circumstances was immersion 
ever used in the washings of the priests, or the rites of the 
tabernacle and temple service. 

Section XXXII. — LWe these ivere the Washings of the People. 

The conclusion just indicated as to the washings of the 
priests, carries with it a like decision respecting all the 
self-performed washings. 

1. The word rahatz, to wash, is used in the same man- 
ner, in the directions given with respect to all the various 



Sec. XXXII.] THE OTHER SELF-WASHINGS. 135 

cases, of hands, feet and person, — of priests and people, 
and of the sacrificial pieces, alike. 

2. The self-washings imposed on the people were of the 
same essential nature and meaning as those of the priests. 
In both, the idea was that of. holiness and purity of heart 
and hfe, maintained by personal watchfulness and efficiency 
through the grace of the Holy Spirit. If this idea was 
properly symbolized by the priestly ablutions without im- 
mersion, the conclusion is unavoidable, that among the 
people immersion was unknown. To them, the mode used 
by the priests would be the standard of propriety. 

3. It is impossible to elicit tiny consistent meaning out 
of the supposed immersions. The ritual system was char- 
acterized by congruity in all its parts, and meaning every- 
where. AVhat else upon Baptist principles, can the immer- 
si(ms be thought to mean, if not the burial of Christ? But 
how, then, are we to understand the grades of washings, 
of the hands, and feet, and garments, as so carefully dis- 
tinguished from each other, and from that of the person? 
What means the fact, which is so clearly marked, that 
these washings were self-performed? Did Christ entomb 
himself? How are we to explain the washing of Aaron by 
Moses ? If immersion is typical of the burial of the Lord 
Jesus, what pertiuence could it have to his birth and in- 
auguration as priest? What mean the peculiar times at 
which the self- washings were to be performed, — the priests 
being required always to wash hejore offering sacrifice or 
ministering at the altar ; whilst, the unclean for seven 
days performed the same rite at the end of the seven days, 
a^ier they had been restored from typical death ? Was 
Christ buried hejore he had made of himself an offering and 
a sacrifice? Or, again, was it ajter he had, by the Spirit, 
risen from the dead ? On the immersion theory, the facts 
can not be reconciled. 

Whilst all these considerations point decisively to one 
conclusion, there is not a fact nor a circumstance to occa- 



136 RITUAL SELF-WASHINGS. [Part IV. 

sion even a moment's embarrassment in its acceptance. 
Assume the washings to have been immersions, and confu- 
sion and perplexity invest the subject. Recognize them in 
their true character as ablutions and not immersions, and 
all is clear and congruous. The customs of the people, — 
the circumstances in which the rites were performed, — the 
words used to describe them, — the ritual relations in which 
they occur, — the analogies of the whole system, — the ex- 
amples of the priests, and every casual incident and allu- 
sion, — all find, in this view, a center around Avhich they 
cluster and shine, in perfect harmony, clearness and con- 
gruity of meaning. 

The conclusion is impregnable. Immersion, as a rite 
of cleansing or purifying, was utterly unknown to Israel. 
And, particularly, there is nothing whatever to be found, 
in all the records of the Levitical system to wdiich the ad- 
vocates of immersion can point and say, — "Here are the 
ordinances of which Paul speaks, wherein divers immer- 
sions were imposed on Israel, until the time of reforma- 
tion." It is therefore certain that in the vocabulary of Paul j 
Baptizo did not mean^ to immerse, aiid baptism is not so 
performed. 

Section XXXIII. — Defilements and Purifyings of Tilings. 

Things, as well as persons, were liable to defilements, 
both the major and the minor, and the law made corre- 
spondent provision for their cleansing. 

1. To the class of minor defilements belonged those of 
wooden vessels, and bags of cloth or skin, which had been 
touched by the dead carcase of an unclean animal. "It 
must be put into w^ater," and be unclean until the even. 
(Lev. xi, 32.) Here, at last, is an immersion ; the only 
one found in the entire law. The case is of great interest 
as illustrating the ease and clearness with which immersion 
is expressed when it was intended. We search in vain for 
any corresponding directions, in the case of persons; — 



Skc. XXXIII.] PUKIFYINGS OF THINGS. 137 

" They must be put into water." This rule moreover is of 
great importance, as constituting a standard of reference by 
which to ascertain the divine estimation of the value of 
immersion as a ritual purifying. Of certain animals, the 
ordinance was that " whosoever doth touch them, when 
they be dead, shall be unclean until the even. And upon 
whatsoever any of them, when they are dead, doth fall, it 
shall be unclean ; whether it be any vessel of wood, or 
raiment, or skin, or sack, whatsoever vessel it be wherein 
any work is done, it must be put into water, and it shall be 
unclean until the even ; — so it shall be cleansed." — lb. 31, 
32. Thus, it appears, from both examples, — of persons 
and of things, — that the uncleauness described was of the 
minor grade, which continued only till the even. In fact, 
it seems to have been the lightest form of this grade. For, 
while the law provided that he that bore such carcase must 
" wash his clothes," (vs. 25, 28) and be unclean until the 
even, — it directed, concerning the present case of mere 
casual and momentary contact by touching it, that he shall 
be " unclean until the even," without any prescription of 
cleansing rites. (Compare also, v. 29.) The meaning of 
this may be gathered from a comparison of 1 Cor. v, 9- 
13. In the Levitical system, unclean beasts seem to rep- 
resent unregenerate men. To God's people, a certain 
amount of contact with them is inevitable; from which, 
therefore, and its defiling influences, the only remedy is to 
be looked for in the ending of this life, and the entrance 
upon heaven's rest. The emphasis of the ritual warnings 
was, therefore, directed, not against involuntary and casual 
contact with the evil, but against dalliance with it, ex- 
pressed by carrying and eating the unclean. The immersion 
which we have found to be prescribed, was appointed, not 
for persons, but for things, — and for things tainted with 
this slightest of all the defilements known to the law. On 
the other hand, as we shall presently see, for major defile- 
ments of things, — by the dead and by leprosy, — the same 

12 



138 RITUAL SELF-WASHINGS. [Part IV. 

sacrificial rites, and sprinkling of water were ordained, as 
in the case of persons. Such is the divine testimony as to 
the relative ritual value of immersion and sprinkling. I 
will not wrong the intelligence of the reader, by discussing 
the possibility of this immersion, being what Paul meant 
by the " divers baptisms" of the law. 

Other minor defilements of things were, (1.) Brazen ves- 
sels used for cooking the flesh of the sin offerings. They 
were to be "scoured and rinsed in water." If the vessel 
was of earthenware, it was to be broken. (Lev. vi, 28. 
Compare 1 Cor. xi, 24.) (2.) "The vessel of earth that he 
toucheth, which hath an issue, shall be broken; and every 
vessel of wood shall be rinsed in water " — IK xv, 12. 

2. Things defiled by the dead, were to be sprinkled 
with the water of separation, on the third day and on the 
seventh. (Num. xix, 14, 15, 18.) In the case of the spoil 
of Midian, there was a further purifying. — "Every thing 
that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the 
fire ; and it shall be clean ; nevertheless it shall be purified 
with the water of separation ; and all that abideth not the 
fire ye shall make go through the water." — Num. xxxi, 23. 
The word "go through," here, is the same that is used 
when Jesse is said to have caused seven of his sons to 
"pass by," and to "pass before" Samuel, (1 Sam. xvi, 
9, 10); when Jacob caused his household to "pass over" 
the brook, (nmrgin. Gen. xxxii, 23) ; and when God 
promised to make all his goodness to " pass before" Moses. 
(Ex. xxxiii, 19.) The alternatives here of fire and water 
seem to have reference to the two great facts of purgation 
in the world's history, of which Peter speaks. (2 Pet. 
iii, 5-7.) The deluge was a purifying of the earth, defiled 
by sin, and so will the fire be, in the final day. 

3. A house infected with leprosy, when cured, was 
treated in a manner essentially the same as was a person 
so afflicted. (Lev. xiv, 34-53.) 



6kc. XXXiV.] OLD TESTAMENT ALLUSIONS. 139 



Part V. 

LATER TRACES OP THE SPRINKLED BAPTISMS. 

Section XXXIV. — Old Testament Allusions. 

THE rite of purifying with the ashes of the red heifer 
was one of the most famihar and impressive of the 
Mosaic institutions. That its observance was maintained 
through the whole course of Israel's history, is evinced by 
the frequent allusions of the sacred wTiters. King Saul 
found in the ordinances on this subject an explanation of 
David's absence from his table. — "Something hath befallen 
him. He is not clean : surely he is not clean." — 1 Sam. 
XX, 26. The words of David himself have been referred 
to already, as he cries, — " Purge me with hyssop, and I 
shall be clean." — Psa. li, 7. This was written about five 
hundred years after the giving of the law. Three centu- 
ries later, the Lord says to Israel by Hosea, — "Their sac- 
rifices shall be unto them as the bread of mourners," (that 
is, bread made or touched by those that were defiled by 
the dead), " all that eat thereof shall be polluted." — Hosea 
ix, 4. Isaiah began his prophecy about twenty -five years 
later, — about B. C. 760-698. In his time a great revival 
took place, under the hand of King Hezekiah, in connec- 
tion with which the laws of purification came into promi- 
nent notice. It began with the exhortation of Hezekiah, 
to the priests and Levites. — "Hear me, ye Levites; sanctify''' 
(or, cleanse) " now yourselves, and sanctify the house of 
the Lord God of your fathers ; and carry forth the filthi- 
ness out of the holy place." — 2 Chron. xxix, 5. When 
this was done, the king appointed a service of dedication. 
In it " the priests were too few, so that they could not flay 



140 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Paut V. 

all the burnt offerings; wherefore, their brethren theLevites 
did help them, till the work was ended, and until the other 
priests had sanctified themselves : for the Levites were 
more upright in heart to sanctify themselves than the 
priests." — vs. 34. Immediately afterward the king kept 
a great passover, gathering the remnants of the ten tribes, 
with Judah. "And the priests and the Levites were 
ashamed and sanctified themselves, .... for there were 
many in the congregation that were not sanctified : therefore 
the Levites had charge of the killing of the passovers for 
every one that was not clean, to sanctify them unto the 
Lord. For a multitude of the people, even mauy of 
Ephraim and Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun, had not 
cleansed themselves, yet did they eat the passover other- 
wise than it was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, 
saying, The good Lord pardon every one that prepare th 
his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, 
though he be not cleansed accordiug to the purification of 
the sanctuary. And the Lord hearkened to Hezekiah, and 
healed the people." — lb. xxx, 15-20. 

In Isaiah, occurs that prophecy of God's grace for the 
Gentiles, "Behold my servant, ... as many were aston- 
ied at thee, his visage was so marred more than any 
man, and his form more than the sons of men ; so shall he 
sprinkle many nations." — Isa. lii, 13-15. There are two 
words in the original Hebrew, meaning, to sprinkle. That 
which here occurs is used to describe the purifying of the 
leper, and of those defiled by the dead. The priest, with 
the scarlet wool, cedar wood and hyssop, "shall spriMe 
upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy, seven 
times." — Lev. xiv, 7. "A clean person shall take hyssop 
and dip it in the water, and sprinhle it upon the tent, and 
upon all the vessels, and upon the persons." — Num. xix, 
18. The Jewish translators of the Septuagiut, have ren- 
dered the passage, "so shall he astonish many nations." 
But this only shows how willingly those writers would 



Sbc. XXXIV.] OLD TESTAMENT ALLUSIONS. 141 

have obliterated from the text the promise of salvation for 
the Gentiles, which it contaius. We know that the Gen- 
tiles were by the law, held to be unclean — "dead in tres- 
passes and sins." — Eph. ii, 1, 11, Acts x, 1-1-16, 28; xv, 
9. We have seen baptism by sprinkling to have been ap- 
pointed for the purifying of every kind of uncleanness, 
and witnessed its use in the reception of the children of 
Midian. Moreover, the word here found in the original 
is everywhere else used in the sense of sprinkling. With 
one exception, it is invariably employed as descriptive of 
the ritual purifyings. The exception describes the sprink- 
ling or spattering of the blood of Jezebel, when she was 
hurled from the height of the palace. (2 Kings ix, 
33.) There is no conceivable reason for making the text 
an exception to the meaning thus invariably indicated. 
Christ, the Baptizer, will sprinkle many nations. He 
"will pour out of his Spirit on all flesh." — Acts ii, 17; 
Joel ii, 28. Of this it is that Isaiah speaks in the place 
in question. 

The same grace was promised to Israel by the prophet 
Ezekiel (B. C. 595-574), in language which we have 
already quoted, "Then will I sprinkle clean water ujion 
you, and ye shall be clean." — Ezek. xxxvi, 24-27. In this 
prophet's vision of the future temple, he says of the priests: 
"They shall come at no dead person to defile themselves: 
but for father, or for mother, or for son, or fur daughter, 
for brother, or for sister that hath had no husband, they 
may defile themselves. And after he is cleansed, they 
sliall reckon unto him seven days. And in the day that 
he goeth into the sanctuary, unto the inner court to min- 
ister in the sanctuary he shall offer his sin-ofierinir, saith 
the Lord God."— Ezek, xliv, 25-27. 

About fifty years after the close of Ezekiel's prophecy 
Haggai was sent to Judah (B. C. 520). He inquires of 
the priests, respecting " bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, 
or any meat," "If one that is unclean by a dead body 



142 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

touch any of these shall it be unclean? And the priests 
answered, and said, It shall be unclean." — Hag. ii, 13. 

Except the brief testimony of Malachi, Zechariah was 
the last of the prophets. His ministry closed, about B. C. 
487. In his prophecy occurs that promise of "a fountain 
opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of 
Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness." — Zech. xiii, 1. 
The word, ''fountain," in the original means a flowing 
spring, "opened," as was the rock in the wilderness; of 
which the Psalmist says, "He opened the roek and the 
waters gushed out; they ran in the dry places like a 
river." — Psa. cv, 41. The language of Zechariah seems 
to be an allusion to this. 

We have thus traced the baptism of purifying with 
the water of separation through the writings of the proph- 
ets for a thousand years, from the time of its institution 
to within less than five hundred years of the coming of 
Christ. We shall presently follow it down to the time of 
Christ and to the destruction of Jerusalem. 

Section XXXV. — Eabbinic Traditions as to the Bed Heifer. 

Accordiug to Jewish tradition the burning of the red 
heifer took place but nine times, from the beginning, until 
the final dispersion of the nation. The first was by Ele- 
azar, in the w^ilderness. (Num. xix, 3.) This, they say, 
was not repeated for more than a thousand years, when 
Ezra offered the second, upon the return of the captivity 
from Babylon. From that time, until the destruction of 
Jerusalem by Titus was about five hundred years, during 
which they report seven heifers to have been burned — ^two 
by Simon, the just, two by Johanan, the father of IMatthias, 
one by Elioenai, the son of Hakkoph, one by Hananeel 
Hammizri, and one by Ishmael, the son of Fabi. Since 
then, it has been impossible for them to fulfill the rite 
according to the law% as the altar and temple arc no more. 
The tenth they say will be offered by the Messiah, at his 



Sec. XXXVI.] FESTIVAL OF POURING WATER. 143 

coming.'^ Liglitfoot finds iu the increased frequency with 
Avhich the heifer ^vas burned, during the later period of 
Jewish liistory, a circumstantial illustration of the growing 
spirit of ritualism, which multiplied the occasions of using 
the ashes. It is, however, impossible to accej^t the account, 
at least, as to the earlier period, as authentic history. It 
is probably mere conjecture, suggested by the silence of the 
Scri2:)tures, and is most improbable in itself. But the later 
tradition is more reliable; as, at the time when it Avas put 
upon record, the Jews were undoubtedly in possession of 
abundant historical materials, for the period subsequent to 
the return of the captivity under Ezra. According to this 
account, seven heifers served all the purposes of that form 
of purification, for five hundred years. In that time, over 
fifteen generations, or not less than fifty milhons of Jews 
were consigned to the sepulcher, and the consequent 
sprinkling administered to the families, attendants, houses,. 
and furniture. If we ignore all other applications of these 
ashes, to those defiled by the slain in battle, and to those 
subject to other causes of defilement, it is still evident 
that the sufficiency and virtue of the rite Avere not held to 
depend upon the quantity of the ashes employed, and that 
the amount actually used was so minute that it can not 
have been perceptible in the water. The manner of ad- 
ministration was thus true to the nature of the ordinance, 
as having no intrinsic virtue, in itself, but only in its sig- 
nificance as addressed to intelligence and faith. And it 
prepared the minds of the people to witness w^ithout per- 
plexity, the change from water in which an inappreciable 
quantity of ashes appealed to the imagination, to that in 
which, while no ashes were used, the association of ideas 
and meaning remained the same. 

Section XXXVI. — The FeMival of the Outpouring of Water. 

Xot only are the Old Testament Scriptures full of the 
doctrine of the outpouring of the Spirit, under the figure 

* JuchasLn, fol 16, in Liglitfoot. 



144 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V, 

of liviDg water ; but one of the most remarkable of the 
institutions observed by the Jews from the days of the 
prophets here last quoted, had immediate relation to 
the same thing. It was called "The festival of the out- 
pouring of Avater." Its origin was by the Jews attributed 
to the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, under whose min- 
istry the temple was rebuilt, and the ordinances restored ; 
a tradition Avliich is confirmed by internal evidence. The 
festival was incorporated with the feast of the ingathering, 
or tabernacles. That feast seems to have been the pre- 
eminent type of the prosperity, the rest and gladness of 
the kingdom of Messiah. By the law, the people were re- 
quired to gather "the boughs" (in the margin, "the 
fruit") "of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the 
boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook, and ye 
shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days." — Lev. 
xxiii, 40. They used the fruit of the citron or lemon, with 
branches of the palm and the myrtle, and willows from the 
brook Kedron. These tied together in one bunch were 
called, the liilah. Early on the morning of the first day 
of the feast, the }>eople, clothed in holiday garb, assembled 
at the temple, each having a lulab in one hand and a cit- 
ron in the other, and each carrying a branch of willow, 
with which they adorned the altar round about. As soon 
as the morning sacrifice was placed on the altar, a priest 
descended to the fountain of Siloam, which flowed from 
the foot of the temple mount, bearing a golden vase or 
pitcher, which he filled with water. As he entered the 
court, through that gate which was hence called " the 
water gate," the trumpets sounded. He ascended to the 
great altar of burnt offering, where were placed two silver 
bowls, one on the east side of the altar and the other on 
the west, one of which contained wine. Into the other, he 
poured the water from the golden vessel, and then ming- 
ling the water and wine, slowly poured it on the ground, 
as it would seem, to the east and to the west, as the bowls 



Sec. XXX VI.] FESTIVAL OF POURING WATER. 145 

were placed. (Compare Zecli. xiv, 8.) In the mean 
time the temple choir sang the Hallel to the accompani- 
ment of instruments of music* Then, the people who 
thronged the court marched in procession about the altar, 
waving their lulabs, and setting them bending toward it, 
the trumpets sounding and the people shouting, "Halle- 
lujah!" and "Plosanna!" with ejaculations of prayer, 
thanksgiving and praise, selected from the Psalms. In 
this service, even the little children, as soon as able to 
wave a palm branch, were encouraged to join. After this 
they went home to dine, and spent the afternoon reading 
the law or hearing the expositions of learned scribes. In 
the evening commenced the festive joy of the outpouring 
of the ^vater. The water was drawn and poured out, at 
the time of the morning sacrifice and in connection with 
it, — a solemnity in the presence of which any hilarious 
demonstrations were inopportune. The festivity was there- 
fore reserved until the evening. The multitude then as- 
sembled in the court of the women, that being the largest 
court, and the nearest approach that the women as a body 
could make to the holy house. On this occasion they occu- 
l)ied the galleries which surrounded the court, whilst the 
men thronged the open space. At suitable places, in the 
court there were great candelabra of such size and height 
that they overlooked the whole temple mount. A ladder 
stood by each, by means of which young priests from time 
to time ascended and replenished the oil, of which each 
bowl is reported by the Talmud to have held seven or 
eight gallons. Many of the people also carried torches, so 
that the wdiole mount Avas flooded with light. The festiv- 
ity was begun by the temple choir of priests, who, stand- 
ing in order upon the fifteen steps that led down from the 
court of Israel to that of the women, chanted some of the 



*Ps. rxiii-cxviii, were known among tlio Jews as, the Hallel, 
that is. Praise, ])eing snnf; at the temple on the first of each 
month, and at the annual feasts. 

13 



l46 * LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

''songs of degrees," to the accompaniment of instruments ; 
whilst such of the people as were skilled in music joined 
their voices and instruments. Then, the chief men of the 
nation, rulers of synagogues, members of the sanhedrim, 
scribes, doctors of the law, and all such as were of eminent 
rank or repute for gifts or piety laid off their outer robes, 
and joined in a joyous leaping and dancing, in the presence 
of the multitude, singing and shouting Hosannas and Hal- 
lelujahs, and ejaculating the praises of God. Thus a great 
part of the night was expended, each one emulating the 
others in imitation of the humility of David, at the bring- 
ing up of the ark (2 Sam. vi, 15, 16) ; for, the excitement 
now indulged in, the leaping and dancing, were, at other 
times, accounted unbecoming the dignity of the nobles of 
Israel. Al> length, two of the priests, standing in the gate 
of Nicanor, which was at the head of the stairway, sounded 
their trumpets, and descending the steps continued to sound 
as they traversed the court, until they came to the eastern 
gate. Here they turned around toward the west, so as to 
face the temple. They then cried, — " Our fathers who 
were in this place, turned their backs to the temple of the 
Lord, and their faces toward the east.* But as for us, 
we turn to Him, and our eyes look unto Him." The 
assembly then dispersed. With slight variations, the same 
order was observed each of the seven days of the feast. f 

The joy of the people at the ingathering of the harvest 
and the prosperous end of the labors of the year, — the gay 
and festive appearance of the city, every housetop and 
open space, and even the sides and top of the mount of 
Olives, covered with the green booths, — the extraordinary 
services at the temple, where more sacrifices were offered 
during the week than in all the other feasts of the year 
together, — the green willows adorning the altar and daily 

*See Ezek. viii, 16. 

tLightfoot on this Feast and that of Tabernacles. Lewis's 
"Origines IlebraeDe." Poors ''Synopsis," etc. 



Sec. XXXVL] FESTIVAL OF POURING WATER. 147 

renewed — the processions around it, the branches carried 
by the people, — the trumpets, songs, and Hosannas, — and, 
at night, the flaming lights, the jubliant concourse, the 
waving of the lulabs, the music and dancing, the shout- 
ings, songs, and trumpets, must have presented a scene of 
exhilaration and gladness hard to conceive. It was a say- 
ing of the rabbins, that " He that has not witnessed the 
festivity of the pouring out of the water, has never seen 
festivity at all." 

The rabbins are obscure in their explanations of the 
observance here described. Some would represent it as a 
thanksgiving for the rains by which the soil had been fer- 
tilized and the harvests matured. But with a better ap- 
preciation. Rabbi Levi is reported in the Talmud, ''Why 
is it called the drawing of water? Says Rabbi Levi, Be- 
cause of the receiving of the Holy Spirit, according to that 
which is written, — With joy will we draw water from the 
wells of salvation." — Isa. xii, 3. That the outpouring had 
reference, not to the receiving of the Spirit by Israel, but 
to its outpouring upon the Gentiles, in the days of the 
Messiah, is confirmed by the tenor of the prophecies of 
Haggai and Zechariah, the authors of the observance, and 
by language of our Savior, which expositors agree in re-' 
ferring to this rite. Both of those prophets encouraged 
Judah in rebuilding the temple by the assurance that 
" the Desire of all nations should come" to it. — Hag. ii, 7. 
Said the Lord, by Zechariah, " Rejoice greatly, O daugh- 
ter of Zion ; Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem ; behold thy 
King cometh unto thee : he is just and having salvation : 
lowly and riding upon an ass and upon a colt the foal of 
an ass. ... It shall come to pass, in that day, that I will 
seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusa- 
lem. And I will pour upon the house of David and upon 
the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and of 
supplications, and they shall look upon me whom they 
have pierced, and they shall mourn for him. ... In that 



148 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David 
and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for un- 
cleanness. . . . And it shall be in that day, that living 
waters shall go out from Jerusalem : half of them toward 
the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea. 
In summer and winter shall it be. And the Lord shall be 
king over all the earth ; In that day there shall be one 
Lord, and his name one. . . . And it shall come to pass 
that every one that is left of all the nations which came 
against Jerusalem, shall even go up, from year to year, to 
worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast 
of tabernacles." — Zech. ix, 9; xii, 9, 10; xiii, 1; xiv, 
8, 9, 16. 

To all this, reference is evidently had in the incident 
related by the evangelist, John, as occurring at this feast. — 
*' In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood 
and cried, saying. If any man thirst, let him come unto 
me and drink. He that believeth in me, as the Scripture 
hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. 
But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe 
on him should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet 
given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified." — John vii, 
S7-39. These words of Jesus, as will hereafter appear, 
had distinct reference to the giving of the gospel to the 
Gentiles. A few additional facts will shed a clearer light 
uj)on the meaning of the festival. 

The feast of tabernacles, strictly so called, was of 
seven days' continuance ; during which the people dwelt in 
booths. On the eighth day, they removed the booths and 
re-entered their houses. They observed that day as a dis- 
tinct and peculiar festival. *' On the eighth day shall be a 
holy convocation unto you ; and ye shall offer an oifering 
made by fire unto the Lord ; it is a solemn assembly." 
(Lev. xxiii, 36 ; Deut. xvi, 13-15.) During the seven days 
the oflferings upon the altar had a very remarkable order. 
On the first day, they were " thirteen young bullocks, two 



Sec. XXXVI.] FESTIVAL OF POURING WATER. 149 

rams, and fourteen lambs of the first year," and one kid 
of the goats for a sin offering. These 'were in addition to 
the ordinary daily offerings. On each successive day, the 
number of the bullocks was reduced by one, "whilst the 
other offerings remained the same. But on the eighth day 
the offering "was one bullock, one ram, and seven lambs, 
and one goat for a sin offering. (Xum. xxix, 12-38.) On 
this peculiar order of sacrifices, the explanations of the 
scribes are various. In the Talmud, Rabbi Solomon states 
the bullocks, "whose aggregate number for the seven days 
"was seventy, to have represented the seventy idolatrous 
nations; that being, afs the Jews supposed, their number. 
These must be continually diminished, while Israel, repre- 
sented by the other offerings, remains.* Says Pool, — 
"The eighth day was the great day, not by divine ap- 
pointment, but from the opinion of the Jews, who regai'ded 
the sacrifices and prayers of the other days as made, not 
so much for themselves as for the other nations; but the 
eighth, as being solely for themselves." f Hence the Tar- 
gum, — " T/ie eiqliih day shall he holy. Thou seest, O God, 
that Israel in the feast of tabernacles, offers before thee 
seventy bullocks, for the seventy nations, for which they 
ought to love us. But for our love, they are our adversa- 
ries. The holy blessed God therefore saith to Israel, Offer 
for. yourselves on the eighth day." J 

The gospels render us familiar with the religion of the 
scribes. By the help of tradition it sought to divest the 
law of God of its claim upon the allegiance of the heart, 
to obscure and set aside the spiritual meaning of its rites, 
and to substitute a system of minute outward observances, 
and a fanatical pride in the blood of Abraham, which 
looked scornfully down on all other nations as unclean 
and accursed. This svstem was embodied in the Talmud, 



*llabhi Solomon on Num. xxix, in Lightfoot on this feast, 
t Pool's Synopsis, on John vii, 37. He refers to Grotius. 
t Lewis's Orlgines Hebraea.*, p. GOG. 



150 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

and culminated in the compilation of that work, several 
centuries after the destruction of the temple and the down- 
fall of the nation. When, therefore, among the idle tra- 
ditions which fill the pages of that work, we come upon 
occasional traces of a profounder spiritual exegesis, and 
sentiments respecting the Gentiles more in harmony with 
the spirit of Old Testament prophecy, we may confi- 
dently recognize them as precious vestiges of truth, which 
have escaped obliteration, as they were transmitted through 
that uncongenial channel, from a distant and purer an- 
tiquity. 

Such is the conviction which will result from a careful 
comparison of the traditions above cited with the accounts 
of the rites in question^the language of the prophets, and 
the words of Jesus to which reference has just been made. 
By the light thus concentrated, we see, in the ingathering 
of the harvest of the holy land and the festivities following, 
a type and prophecy of the ingathering of the nations into 
the fold of Israel, under the scepter of Messiah, and the 
songs and joy that hail their coming. Then the solemnity 
of the eighth day may have anticipated the time when, 
opposition withdrawn, all nations ''shall go up from year 
to year- to worship the King the Lord of hosts, and to 
keep the feast of tabernacles," when ''the Lord shall be 
King over all the earth, and there shall be one Lord, and 
his name One." In this hght, Israel appears in her lofty 
character and office as the priest-kingdom, standing as me- 
diator for the nations, and making for them offerings of 
atonement and intercessions. Nor less significant was the 
drawing of the water from 

" Siloah's brook that flowed 
Fast by the oracle of God," 

and its outpouring by the priest upon the earth, mingled 
with wine. From that same fountain, during the same 
period of Israel's history, it was the rule to draw all water 
that was used at Jerusalem for purification wdth the water 



Skc. XXXVIL] the HELLENISTIC GREEK. 151 

of separation, especially for those who came to the annual 
feasts. To this, Zechariah alludes in his prophecy of 
that day when " there shall be a fountain opened to the 
house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for 
sin and for uncleanness." — Zech. xiii, 1. By her great 
High Priest, was to be dispensed to Israel and through her 
to all the earth, the Spirit's grace, conveying to the nations 
of the Gentiles the virtue of the blood of Calvary. Jeru- 
salem and the temple were to be the source of those heal- 
ing waters which were to flow to the east and to the west, 
"toward the former sea, and tow^ard the hinder sea," to 
gladden the world. (Zech. xiv, 8.) 

Section XXXVII.— T/ie milenistic Greek. 

After the close of Old Testament prophecy, the con- 
quests of Alexander of Macedon, the consequent diffusion 
of the Greeks, and the favor which that prince and 
his successors showed to the Jews, introduced an intimate 
intercourse between them and the Greeks. By him Alex- 
andria in Egypt was founded, designated by his own name, 
and intended to be the western capital of his empire. In 
this new Greek capital, its founder assigned the Jews an 
extensive section, and equal privileges w^ith the Macedo- 
nians. After the death of Alexander, and the subdivision 
-of his empire, the Ptolemies, the Greek kings of Egypt, 
continued to favor the Jews, treating them on terms of 
equality with the Greeks. During the same period, the 
persecutions suffered by the Jews of Palestine from the 
kings of Syria, drove multitudes into exile, many of whom 
were attracted to Egypt, so that the Jewish population of 
Alexandria was at one time estimated at nearly a million 
of souls, occupying two of the five districts of the city; 
and at least, for a time, governed by their own ethnarch, 
or superior magistrate. Among these Jews, and those 
elsewhere scattered in the Greek colonies, their own lan- 
guage was gradually superseded by the Greek, into which, 



152 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Paut V. 

at leDgth, the Old Testament Scriptures were translated, 
in a version known as the Septuagint. Of the precise 
time and circumstances in which this version was made, 
there is no reliable information, except that it was done 
in Alexandria, within the first quarter of the third century 
before Christ. In the time of Christ, the Greek had be- 
come the language of literature and of commerce for the 
civilized world. Among the Jews disjDersed everywhere, it 
was prevalent, and was extensively used even in Palestine 
itself, and thus became the divinely prepared channel for 
communicating the gospel to all nations. 

But the language thus employed — the Greek of the 
Septuagint, the Apocrypha and the New Testament — was 
not what is known as classic Greek. The Jews did not 
learn it in the schools of Greece, nor from a study of her 
poets, orators, and philosophers. It was the product of 
social and business contact and intercourse of the one peo- 
ple with the other, in a land foreign to both. 

Already the purity of the Attic had been lost, by the 
commingling of the Macedonians with the various tribes 
of Greece proper and her dependencies, in the armies from 
which Alexander's colonists were taken ; and still further 
by the mixed multitude which flocked to their new settle- 
ments. In the process of adaptation to the expression of 
Jewish thought, it was inevitably subjected to further mod- 
ifications, in definition, in syntax, in order and construc- 
tion — in the very tone and spirit W'hich pervade the whole. 
By these modifications, the language, which had grown up 
as the native and coeval expression of the idolatrous relig- 
ion, the arts and philosophy of pagan Greece, was adapted 
to become a repository for the system of divine and saving 
truth, contained in the Scriptures. Those Jews who re- 
sided in Alexandria and other Greek cities, who spake 
this Greek language, and were more or less conformed to 
the manners of the Gentiles among whom they lived, were 
known among their brethren, as Hellenists, that is, Greek 



Sec. XXXVII.] THE HELLENISTIC GREEK. 153 

Jews, aud hence, the Greek dialect used by them has ac- 
quired the designation of Hellenistic Greek. 

The authors of the New Testament adopted this as the 
language of their writings, and, in their references to the 
Old Testament, their quotations are mostly made, not from 
the Hebrew, but from the Septuagint, or Hellenistic ver- 
sion. It was ordinarily used by the Lord Jesus himself in 
his discourses. It thus a})pears as the source aud standard 
of the language of the Nev/ Testament. 

Together with these Greek Scriptures of the Old Testa- 
ment, there have been transmitted to us several other 
Jewish documents of the same period, written in the same 
Hellenistic Greek. They are invaluable for the light which 
they shed upon the history, customs, and modes of thought 
and language of the Jews of that time ; although the at- 
tempt of the church of Rome, to exalt some of them to an 
equal authority with the Scriptures, has tended to fix a 
stigma on them, as known to us under the name of Apoc- 
rypha. Incautious recourse to the rules and definitions 
of classic Greek is liable to deceive and mislead us in the 
critical study of the New Testament. But conclusions in- 
telligently deduced from the language of the Septuagint 
and of the other Jewish writers of that age, are to be re- 
spected as of the highest authority on all questions of the New 
Testament language. On the subject of our present in- 
vestigation, these authorities shed a flood of light. In 
them, we first find the verb, baptizo, used to designate 
rites of religious purifying. Once in the Septuagint, and 
twice in the Apocrypha, it is applied to Hebrew rites of 
this nature. 

That the use of the word to designate rehgious observ- 
ances is peculiar to the Hellenistic, as contradistinguished 
from classic Greek, is indisputable; and it is worthy of 
consideration, how it came to be selected from the Greek 
vocabulary for this purpose. The Hebrews of Egypt, in 
their exile from the land of their fathers, had not aban- 



154 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

doned but rather augmented their zeal for the institutions 
of Moses. A circumstance in their own history, wliich at 
first might have seemed to threaten a dissokition of the 
ties that bound them to the temple at Jerusalem, operated 
in fact to renovate and strengthen them. This was, the 
erection by some of their number, of a temple at Onias in 
Egypt, in imitation of that at Jerusalem. Here, the Levit- 
ical rites were punctually observed under priests of the 
Aaronic line and Levites of the sacred tribe. For this 
they claimed warrant from the prophecy of Isaiah, xix, 
19. — "In that day, shall there be an altar to the Lord in 
the midst of the land of Egypt." The adherents of this 
movement do not seem to have been numerous, and its 
effect was rather to increase the devotion of the people to 
the temple at Jerusalem, and the ordinances there main- 
tained. Among them, was developed the same disposition 
which was prevalent in Judea to give undue importance to 
multiplied rites of purifving; and hence an increased and 
constant necessity of finding, in the Greek language which 
they were now adopting, some word suitable to designate 
these rites. In that language was the verb, ha'pio, meaning 
(1) to dip ; (2) to wet by clipping ; (3) to wet, irrespect- 
ive of the manner ; (4) to dye b}^ dipping, and thence, to 
dye, without respect to mode — even by sprinkling. But, 
as we have seen, the rites in question were not dippings, 
nor were they dyeings, and the word was never used by 
the Jews to designate them. From this root, the Greeks 
derived the verb baptizo. (1.) Its primaiy meaning, as 
used by them, was, — to bring into the state of mersion. 
This. meaning had no respect to the mode of action, whether 
by putting the subject under the fluid, pouring it over him, 
or in whatever manner. In other words, it expressed not 
i?Mmersion, but mersion, — not the mode of inducing the 
state, but the state induced, — that of being embosomed in 
the mersing element. From this primary signification, was 
derived a secondary use of the word. As any thing that 



Sec. XXXYIL] THE HELLEX-ISTIC GREEK. 155 

is mersed is in the possession and control of the mers- 
ing eioment, the word was hence used to express the 
estabhshiiig of a complete possession and coutrolUng influ- 
euce. As we say that a man is drowned, — immersed, — 
oMcrwhelmed, in business, iu trouble, in drunkenness, or in 
sleep ; having, in these expressions, no reference whatever 
to the mode in which the described condition was brought 
about ; so the Greeks used the verb baptizo. They spoke 
of men as baptized with grief, with passion, with business 
cares. An intoxicated person was " baptized With wine," 
etc. In such use of the word, the essential idea is that of 
the action of a pervasive potency by Avhich the subject is 
brought and held in a new state or condition. On this sub- 
ject, no authority could be better or more conclusive than 
that of the Rev. Dr. T. J. Conant, a scholar of unquestioned 
eminence and whose researches on this subject were under- 
taken at the request of the American (Baptist) Bible Union. 
The result of his investigations he thus states. " The word, 
baptizelii, during the whole existence of the Greek as a 
spoken language, had a perfectly defined and unvarying 
import. In its literal use* it meant, as has been shown, — 
to put entirely into or under a liquid, or other penetrable 
substance, generally w^ater, so that the object was wholly 
covered by the enclosing element. By analogy it expressed 
the coming into a new state of life or experience, in which one 
was, as it were, inclosed and swallowed up, so that tem- 
porarily or permanently, he belonged wholly io it." * Dr. 
Dale has been at the trouble to list and enumerate no less 
than forty different words which Dr. Conant employs in his 
translations of this word of " perfectly defined and unvary- 
ing import." It is, however, enough for our present pur- 
pose, that this distinguished scholar here expressly ad- 

*"The Meaning and Use of Baptizein, Philologically and 
Historically investigated for the American Bible Union. By 
T. J. Conant, D. D.," p. 158. The itahcs arc by Dr. C. 



156 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

mits with Italic emphasis, that "by analogy," the word 
"expressed the comiug into a new state of life or expe- 
rience^ in which one was, as it were, inclosed and swallowed 
up, so that temporarily or permanently he belonged wholly 
to it." 

Now, here was the very word required to designate the 
Mosaic rites of purifying. Of dippings and immersions, 
Israel had none ; and, if these had been found in their 
ritual, the verbs, ha-pto^ to dip, and kataduo, to plunge into, to 
immerse, aad the nouns, haplie and katadusis, — a dipping, an 
immersion, were at hand and specific in meaning. But they 
did want Avords to express that potency by which the un- 
clean were, in the words of Dr. Conant, introduced into 
"a new state of life," — a state of ritual cleanness, typical 
of the spiritual newness of life in Christ Jesus which God's 
people receive, by the baptism of the Spirit. To express 
the working of that change, they appropriated the word 
haptizo, to baptize; that is, to cleanse, to purify. Then, to 
give name to the rites by which that change was accom- 
plished, they formed from it the two sacred words, bap- 
tisma and baptismos, words Avholly unknown to classic 
Greek literature. They are, as to etymology and meaning 
identical. By grammarians, the termination, mos, is said 
generally to indicate the act signified by the verb, while 
ma indicates its effect. But the rule is neither absolute 
nor universal; and the sacred writers do not maintain the 
distinction. By them baptisma is used alike to signify the 
act of baptizing, and the effect, the new state produced by 
it. In their writings, the distinction seems to consist in 
the employment of baptismos generically, as designating 
divers kinds of purifying rites ; while baptisma is specifically 
applied to the baptism of John and of Christ. It is found 
in no other writings of that or preceding ages. Outside 
the Scriptures, baptismos occurs once, in the works of 
Josephus, who thus designates John's baptism.* 

*■ " Antiquities of the Jews," XVIII, \i, 2. 



Bec. XXXVIII.] BAPTISM OF NAAMAN. 157 

Section XXXVIII. — The Baptism of Naaman, 

lu the Septuagiut or Greek Scriptures, baptlzo first ap- 
pears in the account of the healing of Naaman. " Elisha 
sent a messenger unto him saying, Go and wash in Jordan 
seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and 
thoushalt be clean. . . . Then went he down, and dipped 
himself seven times in Jordan according to the saying of 
the man of God." — 2 Kings v, 10, 14. It is asserted that 
here is clearly an immersion. — "■ He went down and clipped 
himself seven times." Kespectiug the question thus raised, 
it is, in the first place, to be distinctly noticed, that the 
decision, whatever it be, can not in any way neutralize or 
diminish the force of the argument already developed from 
the divers baptisms of the epistle to the Hebrews. Were 
we to allow that Naaman was immersed, that fact would 
constitute no reply to the demonstration that no immersions 
were * ' imposed on Israel," although divers baptisms were 
imposed. But, that there was no immersion in this case, 
will appear in what follows. 

1. The Avord upon which the immersion argument here 
rests, is the Hebrew tdbal, which is translated, "he dipped." 
As to its meaning in this place, there are several available 
sources of information. First, is the manner in which the 
word is employed elsewhere in the Scriptures. It occurs, 
in all, but fifteen times. It is evident, that while these 
places are sufficient to establish the fact that the word was 
used as they illustrate, they are wholly insufl^icient to con- 
stitute a basis for the assumption that it was never 
used in a sense not there found, or in a sense not there 
doubly illustrated. For example, Gesenius gives, " to 
immerse," as one of the meanings, and appeals to the 
text of Naaman as the only example. Without pre- 
tending to emulate the learning of that great scholar, I 
venture to assert that, although the definition be not illus- 
trated by other examples, there is abundant and various 



158 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

evidence that the word is here used as the equivalent of 
rdhatz,to ivash, according to the proper sense of that word 
as already ascertained. The primary and essential idea of 
tabal appears to be contact by touch, a contact which may 
be of the slightest and most superficial kind, as when the 
priest was directed to dip the finger of his right hand in a 
few drops of oil held in the palm of his left hand (Lev. 
xiv, 15, 16), and when those who bore the ark dipped the 
soles of their feet in the brim or edge of Jordan and the 
w^aters instantly fled away. (Josh, iii, 13, 15.) Again, it 
is used to describe the staining or smearing of Joseph's coat 
with the blood of the kid. (Gen. xxxvii, 31.) In this 
case, there can have been no immersion, since the blood of 
a kid would have been wholly insufficient, and the uniform 
stain thus induced would have detected the fraud of Jo- 
seph's brothers, as the violence of a wild beast would not 
have produced such a result. How the word, in this place 
was understood by the rabbins of Alexandria, is shown by 
the Greek of the Septuagint, in which it is represented by 
moluno, to soil, to stain, to smear. *' They stained or 
smeared his coat with the blood." The same is no doubt 
the meaning of Job, Avhen he says to God, " Yet shalt 
thou plunge iiie in the ditch and mine own clothes shall 
abhor me." — Job ix, 31. Not the mode of action, but the 
soiling contact, was the thought present to Job's mind. 
The usage of the word in the Scriptures does not justify 
the belief that it is ever employed in the energy of mean- 
ing expressed by ^^ plunge." "Yet shalt thou soil me in 
the ditch." 

Another source of information is the direction given to 
Naaman by Elisha. He dipped hitoself seven times " ac- 
cording to the saying, of the man of God." What was that 
saying? Did Elisha direct him to be immersed seven 
times? EKsha sent to him, saying "Go, icasli in Jordan 
seven times." The verb, rdhatz, to wash, we liave exam- 
ined. It means, to perform ablution icith n'at<?r applied to 



Sec. XXXVIIL] BAPTISM OF NAAMAJST. 159 

ilie person. It does not mean, to immerse, nor can the 
action expressed by it be accomplished by immersion. It 
is, moreover, observable, that, as though to emphasize the 
employment of this word, it is twice repeated in the narra- 
tive. Upon receiving Elisha's message, Naaman exclaims, — 
" Abana and Pharpar. . . . May I not wash in them and 
be clean?" And his servants reply, — " If he had bid thee 
do some great thing, . . . how much rather, when he 
saith to thee, Wash, and be clean." Manifestly, the thing 
which the Syrian was commanded, was not, to immerse, 
but, to ivash himself. And when to the meaning of that 
verb, we add the facts already developed as to the customs 
of ablution in those lands, the conclusion is manifest. Naa- 
man was not directed to dip or immerse himself, but ex- 
pressly, to wash ; and if he was in fact dipped, it was not 
" according to the saying of the man of God," but in ex- 
press contravention of it. It may be objected, that a 
sprinkling is not a w'ashiug. But the Psalmist gives a dif- 
ferent testimony. " Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be 
clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow." Here, 
the word, " Wash," which is made parallel and equivalent 
to "Purge me with hyssop," is not rahatz, but the yet 
stronger term, kabas, scour me. The very designation of 
" the unclean," for w^hose "cleansing" those rites were ap- 
pointed is conclusive on the point. That the sprinklings 
thus ordained were, in the law everywhere, viewed as 
washings, is undeniable ; and in fiict, to wash with water 
applied, which is the meaning of rdhatz, is the very action 
of sprinkling. Moreover, in Ezek. xvi, 9, the cleansing of 
the defilement of nidda, for which sprinkling w^as the rit- 
ual remedy, is described as a washing of the most vigorous 
and thorough nature. "Then (rdhatz) washed 7 thee with 
water; yea (shataph), I thoroughly washed away thy blood 
from thee." How the sprinkling of w'ater can be expres- 
sive of such thorougli cleansing, we have already seen. It 
is very strikingly illustrated by the language of the Lord 



160 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLL\G. [Pakt V. 

to Israel by Ezekiel. "Then will I sprinkle clean 
water upon you and ye shall be clean ; from all your 
filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you." — 
Ezek. xxxvi, 25. 

The usage of the Scriptures, as to words equivalent 
to iahal^ will shed further light on the present ques- 
tion. The word is ordinarily represented in the S'eptuagiut 
Greek, by hwpio. Of this verb, we have already stated 
that it means to dip; to wet, by dipping; to wet in any 
mode; to stain or dye by dipping; to dye, even by sprink- 
ling. In the Chaldee of the book of Daniel, the word 
equivalent to tahal is izeha. It thrice occurs in the descrip- 
tion of the calamity of Nebuchadnezzar, when he was cast 
out with the beasts of the field, and "his body wa^ ivet 
with the dew of heaven." — Dan. iv, 23, 25, 33. In each 
of these places, the Septuagint has bapto, an illustration of 
the fact that the latter Avord, even, does not "always 
mean, to dip." If tdbal followed the anal'ogy of these its 
Greek and Chaldee equivalents, we are to expect among 
its secondary meanings that of wetting by affusion. In 
the place concerning Naaman, the word by which tdhal 
is translated into the Greek is haptizo. This fact of itself 
makes it certain that the Septuagint translators did not 
understand Naaman to have been dipped, or immersed; else 
they would have expressed the fact by bapto, or kataduo, 
instead of baptizo, which, in their vocabulary, as we shall 
presently show, was used to express purification by sprink- 
ling with the. water of separation; as we have already seen 
Paul to employ it in the same way. 

2. While these facts, of themselves, make it certain 
that Naaman was not immersed, there remains evidence 
even more conclusive, in the relation which Elislia himself 
and this whole transaction sustained to the covenant law, 
as given to Israel at Sinai. In considering this case, there 
are certain fundamental facts to be held ever in view. 
(1.) Leprosy was, at once, a disease and a ritual unclean- 



Sue. XXXVIII.] BAPTISM OF NAAMAN. 161 

ness; and was distinctly recognized in these two several 
aspects, in the law of God; and hence the leper could not 
but be ritually unclean, whilst the mere healing^ of the 
disease left him still unclean. He must be purified as 
well as healed. (2.) The ritual law was not a scheme of 
arbitrary or unmeaning regulations, but a system of accor- 
dant symbols, each of, which had its own distinct meaning, 
and all of which together constituted a complete and intel- 
ligible exposition of the doctrine of sin and redemption. 
Particularly had the ritual respecting leprosy a meaning 
at once manifest, impressive, and profound. So important 
was it, in the estimation of the divine Lawgiver of Israel, 
that the strict observance of all its requirements was en- 
forced by a new and special admonition addressed to them 
on the banks of Jordan, after the forty years wandering 
in the wilderness. "Take heed, in the plague of leprosy, 
that thou observe diligently and do according to all that 
the priests the Levites shall teach you; as I commanded 
them, so ye shall observe to do. Kemember what the 
Lord thy God did unto Miriam by the way, after that ye 
were come forth out of Egypt." — Deut. xxiv, 8, 9. (3.) 
Tliis law had now been in operation for six hundred years, 
whilst its regulations were such as to arrest and hx the 
attention of all observers. (4.) To Naaman, a Syrian, of 
a country immediately contiguous to the land of Israel, 
and belonging to a people of kindred blood, language, tra- 
ditions, and customs, the Hebrew ideas on this subject, so 
interesting to him, can not have been unknown or strange. 
Even had he been otherwise ignorant, he could not but 
have been informed by the Hebrew maiden at whose sug- 
gestion he undertook his journey to the court of Israel, in 
quest of healing. That hers must have been a character 
of both intelligence and piety, is evident from the whole 
narrative, and especially from the fact that it inspired such 
confidence as led the Syrian, at her suggestion, to obtain 

from his king letters to the king of Israel, and to go to 

14 



162 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Paut V. 

that court, iu the hope of cure, bearing with him rich 
gifts, designed as tokens of gratitude. (2 Kings, v, 2-5.) 
(5.) The whole history shows this episode in the Hfe of 
Ehsha to have been any thing but a casual incident. It 
bears every mark of a special and extraordinary providence, 
designed to bring home to the Syrians and to Israel a sig- 
nal testimony to the power and grace of the true God. 
The pecuhar relation which Elijah and Elisha bore to the 
Syrians is illustrated by the fact that, at this very time, 
the latter held a commission from God through Elijah to 
anoint Hazael to be king of Syria, instead of the reigning 
king Benhadad ; by Elisha's subsequent presence in Da- 
mascus, in fulfillment of that commission, and by the appli- 
cation which Benhadad made to him, to inquire of the 
Lord as to the issue of the disease which was then upon 
him. (1 Kings xix, 15-17; 2 Kings viii, 7-13.) 

3. Ehsha treats the case of Naaman as typical in its 
nature, and as coming under the provisions of the law for 
the cleansing of leprosy. This is manifest from three 
things which appear in the very brief narrative. (1 ) In 
his message to Naaman, he distinguishes between the phys- 
ical healing, and the ritual cleansing. "Thy flesh shall 
Gome again unto thee; and, thou shalt he dean." Thus 
each is separately promised. (2.) He requires Naaman to 
'.' wash seven times.'' The meaning of this seven times we 
have seen. It symbolized a radical cure of the evil of 
heart leprosy, the native corruption of sin — a cure by 
which the sinner will be presented pure and sanctified in 
the seventh, or judgment day. The mode of this cure was 
represented in the law by sprinkling seven times. The 
priest ''shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from 
the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean." — 
Lev. xiv, 7. (3.) He must wash in the river Jordan, 
a'ld nowhere else. But why there? Because the cleaijs- 
ing of the leper, according to the law must be by sprink- 
ling with "running water." — Lev. xiv, 5, 6, 50-52. For 



Sec. XXXVI 1 1.] BAPTISM OF NAAMAN, 163 

the self-washiDg, no siicli prescription was given. The 
Jordan was appointed, because heahng to the leper meant 
life to the dead. It meant the renewing grace of the 
Holy Spirit, and for this none but the water of life that 
flows in the river of the heavenly Canaan will suffice. 
And inasmuch as the land of Israel was typical of that 
better country, no water so proper for the present occasion 
as that which flow^ed in the one river of Israel. If Pales- 
tine was made a type of heaven, the one river of Palestine 
at once became the proper type of that "river of God, 
which is full of water." • 

4. Naaman recognized the significance of the directions 
given by the prophet, and was offended at them. — " Behold, 
I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand and 
call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand 
over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana 
and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the 
waters of Israel ? May I not wash in them and be clean ? 
So he turned and went away in a rage." — 2 Kings v, 11, 12. 
Here (1.) Naaman sharply distinguishes between the heal- 
ing and the cleansing. For the latter purpose, the waters 
of Abana and Pharpar were sufficient for him, — better 
than all those of Israel. All he wanted was, that the 
prophet should heal him ; and for this he was ready to re- 
ward him liberally. But, instead of being treated with 
the consideration due to a lordly patron, he feels himself 
insulted, by being expected to take the position of an un- 
clean and humble suppliant ; and that, too, at the feet of 
the God of Israel. For, (2.) he indicates his understand- 
ing of what was meant by the prophet's message. If 
Elisha had come out and healed the leprosy, as Naaman 
expected, it would have been perfectly consistent with the 
idolatrous religion of the Syrian to recognize Elisha as a 
great prophet, and the God of Elislia as one of the great 
gods ; although entitled to no exclusive worship from the 
Syrians, whose tutelary deity was Rimnion. But, when 



164 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Paut V. 

the prophet, instead of this, sent him to Jm^dan to be 
cleansed, and that by washing seven times, the Syrian 
recognized that he was thus required to own allegiance to 
the God of Israel, and to humble himself, as utterly un- 
clean in His sight, and look to him, as alone able to 
heal his leprosy, or cleanse his sins. In a word, he was, by 
the message of the prophet, brought face to face with the 
glad but humbling word of the gospel, as it spake so clearly 
in the rites of cleansing for leprosy. That, in the result, 
he accepted the good tidings thus announced, may not be 
asserted with confidence. But, that he professed to do 
so, the narrative assures us. "Behold, now, I know 
that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel." — 
vs. 15. By this profession of faith, and by his application 
to Elisha for two mules' burden of the earth of Canaan, 
with which to make an altar to the God of Israel, the 
Syrian showed his intelligent appreciation of the issues in- 
volved in the observances required by Elisha, and of the 
typical meaning of the land and river of Israel. The pur- 
pose of the earth for which he asked was to make an altar, 
after the manner of those appointed in the law ; which ap- 
pear to have been frames or boxes filled with earth on 
which the fire was kindled. (Ex. xx, 24.) 

5. The attempt of some writers to derive countenance 
to the idea of immersion, in this case, from the Levitical 
rites of purifying for leprosy, is wholly futile. They refer 
to the self-washings which were required of the cleansed 
leper, and assume, without a pretense of proof, that they 
were immersions. We have seen that they were not im- 
mersions, but afiiisions. But, that 'it was not to them, but 
to the sprinklings of the law that the directions of Elisha 
refer, is unmistakably indicated by the seven times required. 
The self-washings were to be performed but twice. On the 
first day, the seven sprinklings were administered, and the 
person was then, by the priest, ofiicially proclaimed to be 
clean. (Lev. xiv, 7.) It was after this, that the man thus 



Sfx. XXXVIII.] BAPTISM OF NA A MAN. 165 

clean, was required to perform tbe first self-wasbiug. This 
was repeated once only, — on the eighth day. This distinc- 
tion between the sprinklings which cleansed the leper, and 
tbe self-washings which were required of him as being clean, 
is not cas-ual, but essential, and intimately involved in the 
difference of meaning between them. By no system of in- 
terpretation, therefore, can seven supposed immersions of 
Naaman be identified with the two self-washiugs required 
by the law. To imagine the Syrian to have been directed 
to seek cleansing- by means of the latter, and not by the 
seven sprinklings, would be to suppose him instructed by 
the prophet to seek to his own outward righteousness as the 
means of purging away his sins, and not to the virtue of 
the blood and Spirit of Christ, penetrating to his heart and 
renewing the inner man. Self-washing, as dependent upon 
and subordinate to the sprinkling of the water and blood, 
is beautifully significant of that evangelical obedience and 
holiness which believers cultivate, whilst resting wholly on 
the righteousness of Christ; and which is acceptable only 
thus. But a self-washing, without the sprinkling, or 
even magnified to equality with it, can mean nothing else 
than a disparagement and rejection of Christ's blood and 
Spirit, and a trusting to our own works of righteousness, — 
to a cleansing and holiness self-attained. It would be a 
denial of the need of the Spirit's renewing grace. 

6. Israel and the ordinances given her were appointed 
to be a gospel beacon to the nations. In furtherance of 
this purpose, the rites and ordinances with which she was 
endow^ed were clothed in forms of transparent significance, 
selected by divine wisdom as best adapted to set forth the 
gospel for men's instruction. To suppose Elisha, on this 
occasion, to have ignored or essentially modified those 
respecting leprosy, would imply him to have deliberately 
veiled the light which God had kindled for the Gentiles. 
If any ritual observances were required ot Naaman, the 
alternative was inevitable, that they be those appointed 



166 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING, [Paut V. 

in the law, or that by neglect these be dishonored. No 
motive for the supposed change can be suggested that will 
not imply a disparagement of the neglected rite. 

7. The distinctive office successively filled by Elijah 
and Elisha was that of prophet to the separated kingdom 
of Israel, to whom they were sent to vindicate the repudi- 
ated covenant of Sinai against the apostasies and sins of 
that people. (1 Kings, xix, 8, 10, 14-18.) They were 
appointed to keep alive in Israel the knowledge and faith 
of the covenant God and King whose worship and ordi- 
nances at Jerusalem they had wickedly abandoned. In 
the extraordinary circumstances of Naaman the offerings 
which the cleansed leper was required to make at the tem- 
ple on the eighth day after his purifying, may have been 
omitted. But the supposition that the rites proper to the 
purifying, itself, were changed without necessity or appar- 
ent motive, so that instead of being sprinhled seven times, 
Naaman was seven times iinmersed, would imply that Elisha 
not only thus publicly repudiated the authority of the Le- 
vitical law, but at the same time and in so doing gave direct 
sanction to the conduct of Israel, in separating themselves 
from the temple at Jerusalem and the ordinances and wor- 
ship which, by divine command, were there observed. 
The rites of purifying were part and parcel of the system 
of ordinances given to Israel and concentrated at the sanc- 
tuary, — a system, in all its parts, congruous and interde- 
pendent ; each shedding mutual light on all the rest. If 
Naaman was sprinkled seven times, according to the Le- 
vitical order, that fact would of itself have referred him to 
the Word and ordinances of God, for light and information, 
as to the vastly important questions suggested to him by 
the nature and manner of his disease and cleansing. But, 
if he was immersed, the observance was without authority 
in the law; without example in the Word, then possessed 
or afterward given to Israel; without point of contact or 
principle of cougruity or connection with the system therein 



Sec. XXXVIIL] BAPTISM OF NAAMAN. _ 167 

unfolded ; without explanation anywhere, and without con- 
ceivable motive or meaning, unless it was, to repudiate the 
authority of the Levitical law. Instead, therefore, of the 
ordinance being a guide line, to lead Naanian to the Word 
and worship of the true God, the natural effect of such a 
change as is supposed would have been to deter him from 
any such inquiries. The facts would have certified him 
that the God of EHsha was not the same that reigned at 
Jerusalem ; — that the doctrine of the one, set forth in the 
rite of sprinkling, was manifestly different from that of the 
other expressed by immersion, — and that, therefore, the 
Word and ordinances of the God who dwelt in Zion were 
likely to mislead him, rather than to shed a true light upon 
the character of the God of Eiisha, by whom he had been 
healed. The snare thus presented to the mind of Naaman 
would liave been the more insidious and fatal in propor- 
tion as he should still have recognized an intimate relation, 
or even a kind of identity, between the God of Israel and 
the God of Judah. It was a general characteristic of the 
ancient idolatries, that the same gods, as worshiped at dif- 
ferent places, were supjwsed to be endowed with different 
attributes and affinities, and to require different rites of 
worship. Thus, Zeus Olympius, Jupiter Capitolinus, and 
Jupiter Amon, were looked upon as the same deity ; but 
revealing one character, as on Olympus he was worshiped 
by the tribes of Greece ; another, as, on the Capitoline 
hill he presided over the destinies of mighty Rome ; and 
yet another to the dark tribes who assembled at his tem- 
ple in Thebes in Upper Egypt. Such was the idolatry 
which the supposed rite would have tended to confirm in 
the mind of Naaman. To all this we are to add the fact 
that the very purpose of tlie miracle wrought by Eiisha 
was to let the Syrian *' know that there is a prophet in Is- 
rael." — 2 Kings V, 8. Not, certainly, that EHsha thus pro- 
posed to glorify himself: but to announce himself a prophet 
and witness, for the only living and true God, the God 



168 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

of Israel, whose sanctuary was in Zion. (Compare lb. 
15-18.) 

8. The fact that no admmistrator is menticmed, but 
Naaman is said to have " baptized himself," is no embar- 
rassment to our position. The self-baptism implied by the 
phrase, in the English translation, is not required by the 
form of the Greek nor of the Hebrew. Tlie same kind of 
expression is used, in the directions originally given as to 
the water of separation. "If he purify not himself the 
third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean. 
Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is 
dead, and purifieth not himself . . . the water of separation 
was not sprinkled on him ; he shall be unclean. ... A clean 
person shall sprinkle on the unclean on the third day and on 
the seventh." — Num. xix, 12, 13, 19. The form of ex- 
pression is intended to emphasize the respousibihty of the 
person in the matter of his own cleansing, and is equiv- 
alent in meaning to the phrase, — "cause himself to *be 
sprinkled." Although he can not cleanse himself, he is 
not therefore irresponsible. He must seek to the cleansing, 
if he would enjoy it. The same form is used by Paul, who 
speaks of Ananias as saying to him (^Anastas, baptisai), 
" Rising, baptize thyself, and wash away thy sins." — Acts 
xxii, 16. In the parallel account, we are told that " he 
arose and was baptized." — Acts ix, 18. 

It has been shown already that, in the epistle to the 
Hebrews, baptismoi means the sprinklings ordained in the 
law for defilements of which leprosy was one. In our next 
section, it will appear that the sprinkling of the water of 
separation, upon those defiled by the dead, was familiarly 
known as a baptizing. And as to the case of Naamau, the 
considerations here presented render it certain that baptizo 
is there used in the same sense. He was not immersed, 
but spriulded seven times, according to the law. TCibal is 
here used, not in a modal sense, but to express a cleansing, 
without defining the manner of it. 



Skc. XXXIX.] BAPTIZED FROM THE DEAD. 169 

Section XXXIX.— ''^optizefi jrom tJie Dead." 

The book of Ecclesiasticus, or ''The Wisdom of Jesus 
the son of Sirach," is one of the Apochrypha. It was 
written by Joshua ben Sira ben EUezer, a priest, at Jeru- 
salem, about two hundred years before the coming of 
Christ. "The original Hebrew, with the exception of a 
few fragments in the GenTaras and Midrashim, is no longer 
extant, but we have translations in Greek, Syriac, and 
Arabic. The work has been always held in high esteem, 
by both Jews and Christians, and was judged by some of 
the Talmudists to be worthy of a place among the canon- 
ical Scriptures."* In this work, the priestly author has 
■written this proverb, "He that is baptized from the dead, 
and again toucheth the dead, what availeth his washing?" — 
Ecclus. xxxi, 30 (xxxiv, 25 of the English version). 
Here, it is unquestionable that reference is had to the 
cleansing of those who were defiled by the dead. Such 
persons were "baptized from the dead," that is, purged 
from the defilement, incurred through the touch of the 
dead, by the sprinkling of the water of separation. It has 
been said, by Baptist writers, that the author of the prov- 
erb meant to designate the self-washing which was required 
of those who had been thus sprinkled. But, in the first 
place, we must again repeat it, the self-washings were not 
immersions. In the second, they were not the purification 
from the dead. On that point, the law was express. 
" The man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify 
himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the congre- 
gation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the Lord: 
the water of separation hath not been sprinkled upon him; 
he is unclean." — Num. xix, 20. The self-washings are 
never called purifyings, nor alluded to by that name. Be- 
sides, as before remarked, on another point, the pre-emi- 
nence thus assigned to those washings, as compared with 

* J. W. Etheridge, in "Jerusalem and Tiberias." P. 105. 
15 



170 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Paut V. 

the sprinkliDgs, is contrary to the whole spirit and tenor 
of the law, and Avould imply a preference given to our own 
righteousness, which the former symbolized, over the blood 
of sprinkling of the Lord Jesus, and his renewing Spirit, 
typified by the latter. Moreover, upon this view, we are 
to suppose that the author of the proverb, himself a priest, 
ignored that ofiicial sprinkling which must be performed 
by a clean person, acting in priestly capacity, and which, 
in his days, was performed almost invariably by the priests, 
and falsely attributed the consequent cleansing to the self- 
washing, which was a private personal duty of the cleansed. 
On the relative position of the two ordinances, the prayer 
of the Psalmist, in his deep sense of guilt and defilement 
is very significant. "Purge me with hyssop. Wash me." 
He does not once think of self-washing, but looks up to 
the great High Priest for all. It was unquestionably of 
the sprinkled water of separation that this writer says, 
"He that is baptized from the dead, and again toucheth 
the dead what availeth his washing?" Here again we 
have an impregnable demonstration. We have before 
seen that Paul testifies that the sprinklings of the Mosaic 
system were baptisms. We now have the added voice of 
the son of Sirach certifying the same thing. By the 
mouth of two or three witnesses shall every "word be estab- 
lished. These witnesses are ignorant or false, or else 5ap- 
iizo does not here mean, to dip, to immerse. 

This conclusion is yet farther confirmed by the light 
which the above proverb sheds upon a passage in the 
writings of Paul, which has greatly perplexed expositors. 
"Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, 
if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for 
the dead?" — 1 Cor. xv, 29. Paul is discussing the doc- 
trine of the resurrection. As elsewhere in the epistle, so 
here, he assumes his readers to know the law of Moses. 
(Compare 1 Cor. ix, 8-10; x, 1-10.) To it, he, therefore, 
appeals. — "You know that there is in the law an ordi- 



Skq. XXXIX.] BAPTIZED FROM THE DEAD. 171 

nance for the ritual restoration of auch as, by contact with 
the dead, have become ritiially dead. But what means 
this rite? If the saints shall not really be raised up, to 
what intent is this ritual resurrection?" That such was 
the meaniug of Paul, will hardly be questioned by any 
who consider, (1.) That the law of defilement by the dead, 
and of purification with the water of separation, was a 
statute of universal obligation to Israel, at home, and in 
foreign lands: (2.) That the ordinance and its observance 
were so familiar that, two hundred years before Christ, it 
was made the ground of the proverb above cited. As we 
shall presently see, it is mentioned by Philo and by Jose- 
phus as, in their days, universally observed: (3.) That it 
was known to Paul by the name of baptism : (4.) That it 
meant the giving of life to the dead : (5.) That, hence, 
whatever might be Paul's allusion, it was a fact, through- 
out the dwellings of Israel, that, whenever death visited a 
house, it involved the consequent necessity of the baptism 
of the family and attendants, — a baptism which signified 
the resurrection of the dead. It is, therefore, beyond ques- 
tion that Paul meant to refer to that Levitical purification. 
Such were the facts that his readers could not but so un- 
derstand him. Moreover, his expression here, and that 
which we have heretofore examined concerning the divers' 
baptisms of the law, mutually illustrate each other and 
confirm all our conclusions on the subject. 

Thus, starting with the "divers baptisms" of the epistle 
to the Hebrews, we have identified them with the seal of 
the Sinai covenant and the water of separation. We have 
traced the ordinance in the historical books, the Psalms 
and the prophets ; have found it, in the time of the son of 
Sirach, familiarly known as baptism, and have recognized 
it in the New Testament itself, referred to by the same 
name, by that Hebrew of the Hebrews, the apostle Paul. 
AVe may add tliat the same apostle again refers to imita- 
tions of this ordinance in his dissuasive against ''doctrines 



172 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

of baptisms." (Heb. vi, 2.) Here, he alludes to those 
Pharisaic rites which under the same Dame were coDdemned 
by the Lord Jesus, who reproved them as "teaching for 
doctrines the commandments of men," concerning their 
baptizings. (Mark, vii, 7, 8.) 

Section XL. — Judith's Baptisms. 

Returning to the Apocrypha, the next example of bap- 
tism occurs in the book of Judith. The book dates from 
the period of the Maccabean kings of Judah, between one 
and two hundred years before Christ ; is a historical fiction, 
and is designed to present, in the person of Judith, an 
ideal type of female piety, courage, and virtue, as con- 
ceived by the Jews of that age. According to the story, 
"Nabuchodonosor, the king of Nineveh," being incensed 
against the Jews, had doomed them to destruction. He 
therefore sent Holofernes, with a large army to execute his 
vengeance. This army being re-enforced by the Ammon- 
ites and the sons of Esau, the mighty host, enters on the 
siege of Bethulia, a frontier city of Judah. Surrounding 
the city and filling the whole country, they sieze "the 
water and the fountain of waters," upon which Bethulia 
depended for its supply. Soon, "all the vessels of water 
failed all the inhabitants of Bethulia, and the cisterns were 
emptied, so that they had not water, to drink their fill, 
one day ; for they gave them drink by measure." — Judith 
vii, 12-21. 

In this extremity, the elders of the city yield to the 
clamor of the famished populace, and promise that if suc- 
cor should not come within five days they will surrender 
the city to the Assyrians. It is now that the young and 
beautiful widow, Judith, appears on the scene. Rebuking 
the elders, for their lack of. faith and courage, she decks 
herself and goes forth to beguile Holofernes, whom, in the 
sequel, she slays, in his drunkenness, with his own sword, 
and so delivers her nation. When she came to the Assy- 



Skc. XL.] JUDITH'S BAPTISM. 173 

riaus, " the servants of Holofernes brought her into the 
tent, and she slept until midnight, and she arose at the 
morning watch, and sent to Holofernes, saying, Let my 
lord now command that thy handmaid be allowed to go out 
for prayer. And Holofernes commanded his body-guard 
not to hinder her; and she remained in the tent three 
days, and went out nightly into the valley of Bethulia and 
baptized in the camp, at the fountain of water, And as 
she returned, she besought the Lord God of Israel to di- 
rect her way to the raising up the children of her people" — 
Jud. xii, 5-8. 

Judith's baptism, was evidently not one of those re- 
quired by the law. It was performed statedly every night, 
as a preparation for prayer, and was, no doubt, one of those 
washings which Jewish tradition was, at that time, multi- 
plying, and which were so rife in the days of our 
Savior. Judith's maid was with her, and this baptism 
was no doubt performed in the ordinary mode of washing, 
with water poured on her hands. As to the place of her 
baptism, the language is explicit. It was (en) in the 
camp, but (ej)i) at and not in the fountain. Not only 
does the language thus forbid the supposition that she 
was immersed in the fountain, but the circumstances were 
equally conclusive. She was a young and beautiful woman, 
in the midst of a host of rude and licentious soldiers and 
followers of the army. They held the fountain with jeal- 
ous care, both for the convenience of their own supply, 
and as the sure means of bringing Bethulia to surrender. 
Judith could not there be private for a moment, even at 
midnight, and such exposure as is imagined would have 
been an invitation to certain violence, even though there 
had been no question of defiling the very fountain whence 
the camp drew its supply of water. 

Baptist writers, to prove that Judith, nevertheless, im- 
mersed herself, cite the fact that "as she went up {anebe), 
she besought the Lord God of Israel to direct her way to 



174 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

the raising up of the children of her people." But Dr. 
Dale has pointed out the fact that the very same language 
occurs in a parallel place in the Septuagint Greek, where 
no one ever pretended to find an immersion. Rebekah 
" went down to the well, and filled her pitcher and xi^eni up 
(anebe)." — Gen. xxiv, 15, 16. The fountain of Bethulia 
was in the valley, to which Judith had to go down from 
the head-quarters of Holofernes, which would be in an ele- 
vated position, so as to command a view of the situation. 
To suppose the going up to be out of the water, woidd give 
her a time for prayer so brief and in circumstances so pe- 
culiar as to give the suggestion an air of ridicule. 

It is well known that the impostor Mohammed was as- 
sisted in constructing his institutions by renegade Jews, 
who early became his proselytes. The following precept 
of the Koran will illustrate the practice of baptism before 
prayer : " O true believers, when ye prepare to pray, wash 
your faces and your hands unto the elbows ; and rub your 
heads and your feet unto the ankles ; and if ye be pol- 
luted . . . wash yourselves (all over). But if ye be defiled, 
and ye find no water, take fine sand, and rub your faces 
and your hands therewith. God would not put a difficulty 
upon you. But he desireth to purify you, and to complete 
his favor upon you, that ye may give thanks."* This reg- 
ulation by Mohammed is remarkable in relation to that 
request of Peter, — "Lord not my feet only, but also my 
hands and my head." — John xiii, 9. Both he and the 
prophet of Mecca would seem to have had in view the 
same custom of the scribes. 

From the passages thus examined it appears that in 
Hellenistic Greek the word, haptizo was employed to desig- 
nate two classes of cleansings, — the sacramental sprinklings 
of the law, and the self-imposed washiness of tradition, the 
mode of which, whether performed by aff'usion or sprink- 
ling, is not clear. As to the former: the proverb of the 

* Sale's ** Koran," chapter v. 



Sec, XLL] PHILO AND yOSEPHUS. 175 

SOU of Sirach is clearly a reference to the sprinkled water 
of separation. To the same class, the arguments adduced 
entitle us to refer the baptism of Naaman. To the rites 
of self-Avashing the case of Judith is to be assigned, — not 
to those appointed by the law, but those imitations of the 
scribes which obscured the meaning of the ordinance, as 
appointed of God. 

Section XLI. — Tlie Water of Separation in Philo aiid 
Josephus. 

Philo, commonly called Judseus, was a Jew of Alex- 
andria, who was cotemporary with the apostles. He thus 
expounds the laws of purification : — 

"The law requires him who brings a sacrifice to be 
clean in body and soul ; — in his soul, from all passions, dis- 
order and vices, whether in word or deed ; and pure in 
body, from such things as ritually defile it.-!^ And it has 
appointed a purification for each of these ; for the soul, by 
animals suitable for sacrifice ; — for the body, by (loutron 
kai 'perirrhanteridii) ablutions and sprinklings. . . . The 
body is purified, as I have said by washings and sprink- 
lings ; nor does the law allow a person washed and sprinkled 
once to enter immediately the sacred courts ; but requires 
him to wait without, seven days; and to be sprinkled 
twice, on the third day and on the seventh ; and after these, 
having- washed himself, it admits him to enter and share 
the sacred rites. It is to be considered what judgment 
and philosophy there is in this. For, nearly all other peo- 
ple are sprinkled with mere water, the most drawing it 
from the sea; some from rivers, and others again out of 
vessels of water replenished from fountains. But Moses, 
providing ashes from sacrificial fire (and in what manner 



*a0' uv eSoq avro maveadai. — " From those things which cus- 
tom causes to defile it." "Woq^ commonly means a custom 
grounded in law. (Compare Acts vi, 14; xv, 1 ; xvi, 21 ; xxi, 
21; XXV, 16; xxvi, 3; xxviii, 17; etc.) 



176 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

will be shown presently), directed that some of these 
should be put into a vessel, and water poured upon them ; 
and then dipping twigs of hyssop in the mixture, to sprinkle 
those who were to be cleansed. 

"It is now proper to explain the suitableness of these 
ashes. For they are not bare ashes of wood, consumed by 
fire, but of an animal suited to such purification. For it 
is required that a red heifer which has never borne the 
yoke be sacrificed outside the city, and that the high priest, 
taking some of the blood, shall seven times sprinkle with it 
toward the front of the temple, and shall then burn the 
whole animal with its hide and flesh, its viscera and dung. 
And when the flame declines, that these three things be 
cast into the midst of it ; — a stick of cedar^ a stick of hys- 
sop, and a bunch of cummin. And when the fire has 
wholly expired, it is required, that a clean person collect 
the ashes and deposit them outside the city, in a clean 
place."* 

Josephus was a Jewish priest, who was made prisoner 
by Titus, in the war which ended in the destruction of Je- 
rusalem. He afterward, at Eome, wrote his Jewish "An- 
tiquities," and his " History." He thus describes the man- 
ner of purifying with the ashes of the heifer. " Any persons 
being defiled by a dead body, they put a little of these 
ashes and hyssop into spring water, and baptizing with these 
ashes in water, sprinkled them on the third day and on 
the seventh."! This is a literal translation from the Greek 
of Josephus ; but differs from the popular version of 
Whiston. He renders it,— " They put a little of these 
ashes into spring water with hyssop, and dipping part of 
these ashes in it, they sprinkled them with it," etc. But 
this is a very incorrect translation, is incongruous to the 
ordinance as described by Moses, and converts the account 

"-••Philonis Judsei Opera omnia, Frankofurti, 1691, De Yie- 
timas Offerentibus. 

t Josephus, Antiquities, IV, iv, 6. 



Skc. XLI.] PHILO and yOSEPHUS. 177 

into nonsense. According to it, the ashes are in the first 
place put into the water, and then part of them "dipped 
in it !" How they were recovered from the water, in order 
to the dipping, and how the ashes could be dvp^ed in the 
water at all, we need not inquire, as the translation is in- 
correct. •' Baptizing with these ashes-in-water," truly rep- 
resents the original.* "Baptizing," was the action; the 
mixture of " ashes in w^ater," Avas the element; "sprink- 
ling," the mode; and "the third and seventh days," the 
time. In fact, in using the water of separation, according 
to the law, there was no dipping of any sort, except of the 
hyssop bush, with which the water was sprinkled. The 
only action to which Josephus can refer, — that to which 
he does undoubtedly refer, — by the word, " baptizing," 
is the purifying rite, of Avhich he immediately states the 
form to have been a sprinhling. 

To get rid of the force of this passage, Baptist writers 
have proposed an arbitrary alteration of the text, by the 
erasure of the entire clause (fe Icai — pegen) "with these 
ashes in water." The change thus suggested is purely 
gratuitous. The reading which they propose is without 
the pretense of sanction from any manuscript of Josephus, 
and is sustained by no sound principles of criticism. Its 
only warrant is the necessities of the Baptist position. On 
the contrary, the rendering which we have given is, in 
some of the manuscripts of Josephus, enforced by the pre- 
position (meta) with, after the word, "baptizing." Accord- 
ing to this version, the passage can be read no otherwise 
than as we have given it. "Baptizing loith these ashes 
in water." 

In the writings of Josephus there is another and very 



«■ << 



BaTTTiaavrec re koI ttjq Tf<i)paq Tav-Tjq e'lt; TC7iyr)vV Tf/<; rfcppac 
TavTT/c is the partitive and instrumental Genitive, and indicators 
the ashes-in-water, as that with which the baptism was to he 
l)erformed. (Compare John ii, 7. — " Fill the water pots with 
water.") 



178 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

characteristic notice as to the use of the Avater of separa- 
tion. Speaking of the funeral rites, he says, ''Our law 
also ordains that the house and its inhabitants shall be 
purified after the funeral is over, that every one may 
thence learn to keep at a great distance from the thought 
of being pure, if he hath once been guilty of murder."* 
We are not to suppose that the spiritual meaning of these 
rites had been so utterly lost by the Jews, that Josephus, 
a priest, a Pharisee, a man of extensive learning and rep- 
utation, imagined this to be a true account of the nature 
and meaning of the ordinance. But he was speaking in 
defense of Judaism, against the assaults of Apion, a Greek 
philosopher of Alexandria, at the bar of the pagan j)hilos- 
ophy of Greece and Kome. He affects, for himself, a pro- 
foundly philosophic style and spirit, and aims to vindicate 
a similar character for the laws and institutions of Moses. 
Knowing that the truths of God as committed to Israel 
would be foolishness to the wise, to whose apj)lause he 
aspired, he sets them aside in favor of his own "philo- 
sophic" inventions. He seems to have taken the sugges- 
tion from certain heathen observances, of which we shall 
see more further on. 

The foregoing extracts not only illustrate the law as to 
the water of separation, and the use of the word, baptlzo, with 
reference to it, but indicate the place held by the ordinance 
among the observances of Israel, down to the time of Jeru- 
salem's desolation. 

Section XLII. — Imitations of these Rites by the Greeks and 
Romans. 

Placed as was Israel in the very center of the civiliza- 
tion of the ancient world, and on the direct line of commu- 
nication between its peoples and empires, her influence 
upon the institutions and religious rites of other nations 
must have been very great, and is traceable in every direc- 

* Josephus against Apion. Book ii, 27. 



Sec. XLIL] IDOLATROUS IMITATIONS. 179 

tion. There is reason to believe that Greece and its colo- 
nies in Italy, from which sprang the republic and empire 
of Rome, derived from Israel the first great impulses of 
their civilization, as weU as continual subsequent contribu- 
tions to its maintenance and growth. Israel had dwelt in 
the land of Canaan about three hundred years before the 
supjx)sed era of the siege of Troy, and seven hundred be- 
fore the reputed date of the great poems of Homer, from 
the silence of which it is evident that to him letters were 
wholly unknown. According to the earliest Greek tradi- 
tion, Cadmus, " the man of the east," coming with a colony 
of Phoenicians settled in Greece, bringing with him the art 
of alphalietic writing. But at what age he lived, or 
whether he was not, in fact, wholly a mythical character is 
a matter of conjecture. The tradition, however, distinctly 
points to. Phoenicia as the land whence the art was intro- 
duced into Greece; and the circumstances accord with this 
supposition. That the Greek letters were derived from 
those called Phoenician is an undoubted fact. The exten- 
sive commerce maiutained by the ships of Phoenicia was a 
constant and efficient means of disseminating the seeds of 
her advancing civilization ; and besides, the sages of Greece 
were accustomed to travel to Egypt, Phoenicia, and the 
east, in search of knowledge; and returned thence with 
acquisitions of which all Greece was the beneficiary. 
About four hundred years before Christ, Plato himself 
was in Egypt in search of knowledge, a student of the 
priests of On. At this time, Egypt was full of Jews, and 
it is not to be imagined that such an inquirer would whoUy 
fail to catch some glimpses of the light which shone in 
the institutions and literature of Israel. 

Many things concur to show that neither Egypt nor 
Phoenicia was the original fountain of much that was thus 
disseminated to Greece. In some instances, the attendant 
circumstances, and in others the internal evidence, unmis- 
takably indicate an Israelite origin. Phoenicia was a strip 



180 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

of sea-coast, ten or twelve miles wide, lying between the 
northern part of the land of Israel and the Mediterranean 
Sea. Tyre and Sidon, its two chief cities, were the only 
practicable sea-ports on the coast of Palestine. They were 
distant, the former, about one hundred and twenty miles, 
and the latter, one hundred, from Jerusalem. Their sup- 
plies were derived largely from the fields, the vineyards, 
and the olive groves of Israel. (2 Chron. ii, 10; Acts xii, 
20.) Except slight provincial differences, the language of 
the two people was the same; and the intimacy of the rela- 
tions is seen in the fact that the drift of dialect in the two 
closely coincided. Hiram king of Tyre, was David's inti- 
mate friend, and Solomon's faithful and efficient ally, in the 
erection of the temple and his own palace, in adorning 
Jerusalem, and in commercial enterprises. His relation 
with David, and his message of salutation to Solomon (2 
Chron. ii, 12) argue him a professed worshiper of the God 
of Israel. Thus, whilst the Phoenician territory was a 
mask by which Israel was concealed from the Mediterra- 
nean countries, the Phoenicians, themselves, can not but 
have realized a profound impression from the wonderful 
system of religious rites and the testimonies of religious 
truth which were maintained in Israel and centered around 
that temple on Mount Sion, which was a monument of 
Phoenician skill in architecture and the mechanic arts. The 
ideas thus communicated and the impressions thus pro- 
duced must have been borne abroad by every wind that 
filled a Phoenician sail, and disseminated to every land that 
was touched by a Phoenician prow. 

The art of alphabetic writing is an illustration of this. 
It did not originate in Phoenicia, but, as internal evidence 
demonstrates, — with the Arameans, of whom Israel was a 
branch. The Phoenician characters were the same as the 
Old Hebrew. Once acquired by that maritime people, the 
art was diffused to Greece, to Kome, and the world. The 
Egyptians no less than the Phoenicians were idolaters, hav- 



Sec. XLIL] IDOLATROUS IMITATIONS. 181 

iiig lords many and gods many. When, therefore, the 
sages of Greece returned from their explorations, prepared 
to whisper to their confidential disciples the sublime doc- 
trine of the divine unity, and even to erect an altar '' To 
the Unknown God"^^ we are justified in the conviction that 
at some point in the course of their travels, they had 
caught an echo of that voice which spake to the twelve 
tribes in the wilderness, — "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our 
God is one Lord." — Deut. vi, 4. To the same originals 
undoubtedly are to be referred many of the ceremonials 
of their religion. Of this, the rules of nncleanness, and 
rites of purifying are remarkable illustrations. 

Of the various forms of purification among the Greeks, 
Plato makes an enumeration. — '■'■T\\q 'piirifications (hathar- 
moi) both according to medicine and vaticination, both the 
pharmacial drugs, {jpharmakois), and the vaticinal fumiga- 
tions (peritiieioseis) as also the washings (loutra) in such 
rites, and the sprinklings (perirrhanseis) ; — are not all these 
effectual to one end, — to render a man pure, both as to 
body and soul ?" f 

On this subject, the historian Grote makes some note- 
worthy statements. — " The names of Orpheus and Musaeus 
(as well as that of Pythagoras, looking at one side of his 
character), represent facts of importance in the history of 
the Grecian mind, .... the gradual influx of Thracian, 

* That this altar was the expression of a blind though real 
groping after the true God, is distinctly attested by Paul. — 
"Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto 
you." — Acts xvii, 23. To suppose as do some that the altar was 
erected by one who was uncertain which of the tutelary dei- 
ties he should propitiate, implies Paul to have resorted to a 
weak pretense, founded on the mere jingle of words, which, so 
far from constituting an appropriate and impressive basis for 
his argument and appeal, would have invited the derision and 
contempt of his skeptical audience. He adopted no such arti- 
fice ; but appealed to a recognized and affectfng fact. 

t Plato, in Cratylo, xxii. 



182 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

Phrygian and Egyptian religious ceremoDies and feelings, 
and the increasing diffusion of special mysteries, schemes 
for religious purification, and orgies (I venture to Angli- 
cize the Greek word, which contains in its original mean- 
ing no implication of the ideas of excess to which it Avas 
afterward diverted), in honor of some particular god, dis- 
tinct from the public solemnities, and from the gentile 

solemnities of primitive Greece During the interval 

between Hesiod and Onomakritus [B. C. 610-510], the 
revolution in the religious mind of Greece was such as to 
place both these deities [Dyonisus and Demeter, the 

Bacchus and Ceres of the Latins] in the front rank 

From all these countries [Egypt, Thrace, Phrygia and 
Lydia], novelties unknown to the Homeric men found their 
way into the Grecian worship; and there is one amongst 
them which deserves to be specially noticed, because it 
marks the generation of the new class of ideas in their 
theology. Homer mentions many guilty of private or in- 
voluntary homicide, and compelled either to go into exile, 
or to make pecuniary satisfaction ; but he never once de- 
scribes any of them to have either received or required 
purification for the crime. Now, in the times subsequent 
to Homer, purification for homicide comes to be indispensa- 
ble. The guilty person is regarded as unfit for the society 
of men, or the worship of the gods, until he has received 
it ; and special ceremonies are prescribed whereby it is to 
be administered. Herodotus tells us that the ceremony of 
purification was the same among the Lydians and the 
Greeks. We know that it formed no part of the early 
religion of the latter, and we may reasonably suspect that 

they borrowed from the former The purification 

of a murderer was originally operated not by the hands of 
any priest or specially sanctified man, but by those of a 
chief or king who goes through the appropriate ceremonies 
in the manner represented by Herodotus, in his pathetic 



Sec. XLIL] IDOLATROUS IMITATIONS. 183 

narrative respectiDg Croesus and Atlrasliis.* The idea of 
a special taint of crime, and of the necessity, as well as 
the sufficiency of prescribed religious ceremonies, as a means 
of removing it, ai)pears thus to have got footing in Grecian 
practice subsequent to the time of Homer." f 

Again he says, — " Herodotus had been profoundly im- 
pressed with what he saw and heard in Egypt. The won- 
derful monuments, the evident antiquity, and the peculiar 
civilization of that country acquired such preponderance 
in his mind, over his own native legends, that he is dis- 
posed to trace the oldest religious names or institutions of 
Greece, to Egyptian or Phoenician original, setting aside, 
in favor of this hypothesis, the Grecian legends of Dyoni- 
sus and Pan." J 

In these statements, the eminent historian seems studi- 
ously to avoid a recognition of the direction to which all 
his facts so distinctly point. All the countries mentioned 
by him border on the Mediterranean, and were in constant 
and intimate communication with Egypt and Phoenicia, the 
relations of which with Israel are too well known to need 
emphasis. They were, in fact, the channels through whicli 
Hebrew ideas must ordinarily pass, in order to gain access 
to Greece and the continent of Europe. To whatever 
source the Greeks may have been immediately indebted 
for the novel ideas of a special stain or defilement, result- 
ing from crime, and of ritual j)urifying from it, we know 
that they Avere incorporated in the laws and ritual of Mo- 
ses ages before there is a trace of them in any of the coun- 
tries mentioned. The disposition of Herodotus to refer 



*But Herodotus does not "represent" the manner of the 
purifying of Adrastus. Moreover, the legend of Croesus and 
Adrastus, is fabulous, as appears from internal evidence (see 
Rawlinson's note on tlie place) ; and with it, the theory of Grote. 
as to the Lydian ori^ijin of the Greek purifying rites falls to the 
ground. See Kawlinson's Herodotus, Hist. I. 35. 

t Grote i, 29-35. tib. 530. 



184 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

them to Egypt and Phoenicia is therefore entitled to 
more respectful consideration than our author gives it. 
That the Gentile rites in question, however grossly cor- 
rupted, were derived from divine orighials, must be man- 
ifest to any one who will compare the significance and 
beauty of the Scriptural rites as connected with the spirit- 
ual truths of revelation, which they symbolized, with the 
bareness and absurdity by w^hich they are characterized, in 
their distorted Gentile forms, detached from the spiritual 
connection to which they natively belonged. 

On the matters of which it treats, no authority is higher 
than Dr. Wm. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman 
Antiquities. "^As to the present subject, it testifies that 
their purifyings, "in every case of which we have any 
certain knowledge were comiected with sacrifices and other 
religious rites, and consisted in the sprinlding of water, by 
means of a branch of laurel or olive ; and at Rome, some- 
times by means of the asijergillum, and in the burning of 
certain materials the smoke of which was thought to have 
a purifying effect."* 

Of the Greek heroes the Abbe Barthelemi says, — 
*' They shuddered at the blood they had spilt, and aban- 
doning their throne and native land, went to implore the 
aid of expiation in some distant country. After the sacri- 
fices enjoined them by the ceremony, a purifying water 
w^as poured upon .the guilty hand, after which they again 
returned into society and prepared themselves for new 
combats, "f 

Of the Romans, Ovid says: — "Our fathers believed 
purifications to be efiectual for blotting out every crime 
and every cause of penalty. Greece w^as the source of the 
custom. She believes the guilty, when purified with lustral 
rites, to be freed from the guilt of their evil deeds. Thus 

* Smith's Greek and Eoman Antiquities, article, "Lus- 
tratio." 

t Travels of Anacharsis, Introduction. 



Sec. XLIL] IDOLATROUS IMITATIONS. 185 

Peleus purified the graudson of Actor ; and thus Acastus, 
with the waters of Hsemus, cleansed Peleus himself, from 
the blood of Phocus. — Ah credulous people ! who su4)pose 
that the dreadful crime of murder can be obliterated by 
(fluminea aqua), running waters."* 

The same poet describes the festival of Pales, the 
tutelary goddess of shepherds. Some days before her fes- 
tival, cows were sacrificed and the uuUorn offspring torn 
from their bowels and burned with fire by the eldest of 
the Vestals, "that their ashes may purify the people on 
the day of Pales." On the festival day he sings: "lam 
called to the Palilia. . . . Often, truly, have I carried in 
my full hand the ashes of the calf and the bean stalks, 
hallowed purifiers. Truly I have leaped over the fires 
kindled in three rows, and the dripping branch of laurel 
has scattered the water. . . . Go, ye people, seek the fu- 
migation from the altar of the virgin! Vesta will give it. 
By the grace of Vesta, you shall be purified. The blood 
of a horse shall be your fumigatory, with the ashes of the 
calf, and third the empty husk of the hard bean. Shep- 
herd, purify your full fed flocks in the early twilight. 
Water should first sprinkle them, and a twig broom should 
sweep the ground." f Again, he tells of "a fountain of 
Mercury near the Capanian gate. If w^e choose to believe 
those who have tried it, it has a divine virtue. Hither 
comes the merchant with purse-girdled tunic, and being 
purified, draws water which he may carry away in a per- 
fumed vase. In this, a branch of laurel is moistened, and 
with the wet laurel all things are sprinkled that are to 
have new owners. He sprinkles his own locks, also, with 
the dripping bush, and with a voice familiar with deceit 
oflTers his prayers. 'Wash away my past perjuries,' says 
he : ' Wash away the falsehoods of the past day. Whether 
I have called thee (Mercury), to witness, or have called 
upon the great majesty of Jove, wishing him not to licar; 

*Ovidii Fast.ii, vs. 27-46. tib. iv, 033-640; 731-736. 
16 



186 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLIXC. [Part V. 

or, if I have been false to any other god or goddess, let 
the swift zephyrs carry away my dishonest words, and let 
my perjuries be obliterated by to-morrow. Let not the 
superior powers give heed to what I may say.'"* 

In Virgil, ^ueas, preparing for flight from the over- 
throw of Troy, says to his father, — " Do you, my father, 
in your hand take the consecrated things and the ancestral 
gods? To me, just returned from such and so recent a 
battle and slaughter, it were sacrilege to touch them, until 
I shall have washed in a living stream." f In another 
place the closing rites at the funeral pyre of Misenus are 
thus described, — ''The same (Choriuaeus) passed thrice 
around his companions with water, sprinkling them with a 
gentle spray, and with a branch of the auspicious olive 
purified the men and uttered the parting words." J 

Of funeral lustrations at Rome, Adams in his Antiqui- 
ties, gives this account: "When the remains of the dead 
were laid in the tomb, those present were, three times, 
sprinkled by a priest with pure water, from a branch of 
olive or laurel, to purify them. . . . The friends when 
they returned home, as a further purification, after being 
sprinkled with Avater, stepped over a fire.§ . . . The house 
itself also was purified and swept with a certain kind of a 
broom." The classic writers frequently refer to similar 
observances among the Greeks. Thus, in Euripides, the 
people are perplexed as to the death of Alcestis, king 
Admetus' wife, because " they do not see the lustral water 
before the door, as is customary at the doors of the dead."|| 

The census of the population of Rome was taken every 
five years, and was followed by a lustration of the city. 

*Ovidii Fast.ii, v, 673-688. t JEn. ii, 717. 

J Ibid, vi, 229.— The (novissima verba) last or parting words, 
were addressed to the deceased, — **Vale! Yale! Yale!" Fare- 
w^ell! Farewell! Farewell! 

§ Compare above, p. 138. 

II Euripides in Alcest. 398. See, also, Aristophanes in Eccl. 
1025. 



Skc. XLII.] IDOLATROUS IMITATIONS. 187 

From this custom the word lustrum (a lustration), came to 
signify a period of five years. There was also a lustration 
for new born infants, when their names were given. For 
boys it was usually on the ninth day after birth ; for girls, 
by some, on the eighth day, and by others, on the fifth, or 
the third day, while some performed it on the last day of 
the week wherein the child was born. " On the lustral 
day, a feast was prepared, over which the goddess Nundina 
was supposed to preside. The assembled women handed 
the child backward and forward around the fire burning 
on the altar of the gods; after which they sprinkled it 
with water, in which Avere mingled saliva and dust."^^ 

Philo Judaeus, was a resident of the Greek colony of 
Alexandria. He was a man of learning, and especially 
versed in the religious doctrines and rites of the Gentiles, 
as well as of Moses, of which he wrote largely. We have 
seen that, in contrasting the purifying rites of other nations 
with those of Israel, he says that " nearly all other people 
are sprinkled with unmixed water, mostly drawing it from 
the sea, some from rivers and others again from vessels 
replenished from fountains." f This preference of the 
water of the sea, probably originated in a desire to differ- 
entiate the Gentile imitations from the divine originals as 
observed by Israel. Of it an illustration appears in Eurip- 
ides. Iphigenia speaks of Orestes and his companions, 
defiled with dreadful crimes, — "First would I {nipsai) 
imbue tliem with holy purifyings." 

King Thoas. "From springs of waters? ' Or, from 
spray of the sea?" 

Iphigenia. "The sea spray QdiizeiX) washes away 
all the crimes of men."§ 

*Rees's Encyclopedia, article, "Lustration." 

t Above, p. 175. 

tK/.ivj (kluzo) to besprinkle, to water, to rinse, to dash 
over. "The sea, besprinkling, washes away all the crimes 
of men." 

iphigenia in Taur. 1192-1194. 



188 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Part V. 

The rites used in the Greek mysteries illustrate the same 
subject. "The benefits which the initiated hoped to obtain 
were security against the vicissitudes of fortune and protec- 
tion from dangers both in this hfe and in the life to come. 
The principal part of the initiation, and that which was 
thought to be most efficacious in producing the desired 
effects, were the lustrations and purifications, whence the 
mysteries themselves are sometimes called katharsia or 
hatharmoi.^'^ 

Those of Eleusis were a manifest imitation of the Levit- 
ical feast of ingathering or tabernacles. They were cele- 
brated at the same season, — immediately after the bringing 
in of the harvest ; and w^re in honor of Demeter, or Ceres, 
the patroness of agriculture. The celebration proper, con- 
tinued for seven days, after which there was an additional 
eighth day, appropriated to the initiation of those who had 
been too late for the regular observances. This, again, 
was followed by a ninth day, which was named plemochoai, 
from a vase called plemochoe. " Two of tliese vessels were 
on this day filled with water or wine," (Should it not be 
"water and w^ine?") "and the contents of one thrown to 
the east, and those of the other to the west, while those 
who performed this rite uttered some mystical words." f 
From the appropriating of a ninth day to the outpouring 
of the water and wine, it seems probable that the mys- 
teries were originally imitated from the Levitical feast 
before the festival of the outpouring was instituted; and 
that when the latter rite was introduced, an additional day 
was appropriated to it, so as to avoid any change in what 
had become the established and consecrated order of the 
preceding days. 

These mysteries were of two orders. The less were 
celebrated at Agrre, and were essential as a preparation 
for the greater at Eleusis. In the preparatory rites, the 

* Smith's Dictionary, article "Mysteria." 

t Smith, arlicle " Eleusinia." Compare above, p. U4. 



Sec. XLIIL] IN EGYPT, AND IN MEXICO. 189 

candidates were required to keep themselves continent and 
unpolluted for nine days; and were purified with water 
sprinkled on them, by an officer who was thence called the 
hydranos/^ At Eleusis they offered sacrifices and prayers, 
wearing garlands of flowers; and, standing on the skin 
of a sacrificial animal, were again purified by the sprinkling 
of water by the hydranos. 

That the observances thus illustrated were corrupted 
forms derived from the rites and institutions of Moses, is 
apparent. So manifest is this, that in the third and fourth 
centuries it was made the ground of a specious theory by 
means of which the advocates of paganism sought to stay 
the progress of Christianity. " Among those who Avished 
to appear wise, and to take moderate ground, many were 
induced to devise a kind of reconciling religion, interme- 
diate between the old superstition and Christianity, and to 
imagine that Christ had enjoined the very same things 
which had long been represented by the pagan priests, un- 
der the envelope of their ceremonies and fables." f 

There was, no doubt, an element of truth in this con- 
ception. The rites of Gentile idolatry were, it is evident, 
corrupted forms derived from divinely appointed institu- 
tions, partly, it may be, by traditon, from the parents of 
the race ; but chiefly by imitation of the ritual of Moses. 

Section XLIII. — Bcq^tism in Egijpt and among the Aztecs. 

I am indebted to the courtesy of W. H. Kyland, F. S. A. 
Secretary of the (British) Society of Biblical Archaeology, 
for a copy of the proceedings at a meeting held on the 4th 
of May, 1880. From it I make the following extract in- 
cluding part of a communication read from ]\I, Paul Pierrot. 
It is descriptive of "the Libation Vase of Osor-ur," pre- 

*'T(^pavog {hydranos), a waterer, a sprinkler with water; from 
v(^patvo), to water, to sprinkle any one with water, to pour out 
libations." — Liddell & Scott's Greek Lexicon. 

tMoshoim, Eccl. Hist., Book II., Part i, ? 18. 



190 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [Paut V. 

served iu tbe Museum of the Louvre (No. 908), an inscrip- 
tion on which has been deciphered by M. Pierret. 

" The vase, of the Saitic epoch, is of bronze, and of an 
oblong form, covered with an inscription, finely traced with 
a pointed instrument. The text has been published, by 
M. Pierret in the second volume of his ' Recueil d' Inscrii> 
tions du Louvre,' in the eighth number of the ' Etudes 
Egyptologiques.' The goddess, Nout, is represented stand- 
ing in her sycamore, pouring the water which is received 
by the deceased, on one side, and by his soul, on the other. 
' Saitli the Osiris, divine father and first prophet of Am- 
mon Osor-ur, truthful ; — Oh, Sycamore of Nout ! give me 
the water and the breath [of life] which proceed from 
thee. That I may have the vigor of the goddess of vigor : 
that I may have the life of the goddess of life ; that I 
may breathe the breath of the goddess of the respiration 
of breaths ; for I am Toum. Saith Nout ; — Oh the Osiris, 
divine father, etc. , thou receivest the libation from my own 
hands ; I, thy beneficent mother, I bring thee the vase, con- 
taining the abundant water for rejoicing thy heart by its 
effusion, that thou may est breathe the breathy [of life] re- 
sulting from it, that thy flesh may live by it. For, I give 
water to every mummy ; I give breath to him whose 
throat is deprived of it, to those whose body is hidden, to 
those who have no funeral chapel. I am with thee. I 
reunite thee to thy soul, which will separate itself no more 
from thee, never.'" 

The Saitic epoch, to which this vase is referred, began with 
the accession of Psammetichus I, about 664, B. C, and closed 
with the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses in 525. The 
parallel period of Jewish history extends from the closing 
years of Manasseh's reign to the time of the machinations 
by which the decree of Cyrus for rebuilding^ the temple 
was suspended. But, although the date thus given is such 
as might suggest the idea of derivation from the institutions 
of Moses, it seems highly probable that the inscription 



Sec. XLIIL] IN EGYPT, AND IN MEXICO. 191 

presents a vestige, in a greatly corrupted form, of the 
primitive faith touching the resurrection, as held by Noah 
and the patriarchs of the old world, and transmitted to the 
founders of the Egyptian empire. Whatever the view 
adopted on that point, the relation of the inscription to the 
subject of the present treatise is manifest and very inter- 
esting. Not only does it very strikingly illustrate the doc- 
trine of life to the dead, as symbolized by the effusion of 
water, but it brings together the two symbols of water and 
the breath of life, in such a manner as presents a very re- 
markable analogy to the similar association of ideas pre- 
sented in the scene of Pentecost, as unfolded hereafter. 

Very remarkable Avas the rite of infant baptism, as it 
was found by the Spanish conquerors among the Aztecs of 
Mexico. * 

" When everything necessary for the baptism had been 
made ready, all the relations of the child were assembled, 
and the midwife, who was the person that performed the 
rite of baptism, was summoned. At early dawn, they met 
together in the court-yard of the house. When the sun 
had risen, the midwife, taking the child in her arms, 
called for a little earthen vessel of water, while those 
about her placed the ornaments which had been prepared 
for the baptism in the midst of the court. To perform the 
rite of baptism, she placed herself with her face toward the 
west, and immediately began to go through certain cere- 
monies. . . . After this she sprinkled water on the head 
of the infant, saying, ' O, my child ! take and receive the 
water of the Lord of the world, which is our life, and is 

* As this work goes into the hands of the printers, the news- 
papers announce that " the Rev. Professor Campbell of Mont- 
real has discovered that the Hittite and Aztec alphabets are 
identical, and by applying the latter to the former, he has been 
enabled to read inscriptions belonging to the ninth century be- 
fore Christ." Should this announcement prove true, it brings 
the Aztecs into a relation to Israel which the reader will at once 
recognize. 



192 LATER TRACES OF SPRINKLING. [rAUT V. 

given for the increasing and renewing of our body. It is 
to wash and to purify. I pray that these heavenly drops 
may enter into your body and dwell there : that they may 
destroy and remove from you all the evil and sin which 
was given you before the beginning of the world ; since all 
of us are under its power, being all the children of Chal- 
chivitlycue [the goddess of water]. She then washed the 
body of the child with water, and spoke in this manner : 
' Whence thou comest, thou that art hurtful to this child ; 
leave him and depart from him, for he now liveth anew, 
and is born anew ; now is he purified and cleansed afresh 
and our mother, Chalchivitlycue, again bringeth him into 
the world.' Having thus prayed, the midwife took the 
child in both hands, and lifting him toward heaven, said, — 
' O Lord, thou seest here thy creature, whom thou hast 
sent into the world, this place of sorrow, suffering, and pen- 
itence. Grant him, O Lord, thy gifts, and thine inspira- 
tion, for thou art the great God, and with thee is the' 
great goddess.' Torches of pine were kept burning during 
the performance of these ceremonies. When these things 
were ended, they gave the child the name of some one of 
his ancestors, in the hope that he might shed a new luster 
over it. The name was given by the same midwife or 
priestess who baptized him."-!^ 

How like, yet how different, the Grreco-Eoman, the 
Egyptian, and the Mexican rites, from each other, and 
from those of Israel and of Christ, appears at a glance. 

Section XLIV. — Tlie Levitical Ba'ptkms in the Christian 
Fathers. 

The writers of the primitive church distinctly recognize 
the Old Testament sprinklings, and especially the water of 
separation, by the name of baptism. By the same name, 
they designate the idolatrous imitations above described. 

*Sahagiin. Hist, de Niieva Espana. vi, 37. In Prescott's 
" Conquest of Mexico." Vol. HI, p. 385. 



Skc. XLIV.] ALL C/S/0.\'S LV THE FA THE RS. 193 

Tertulliau was born about fifty years after the death of 
the apostle John. In allusion to the renewing efficacy 
which he attributed to Christian baptism and the futility 
of the Gentile rites, he says, — " The nations, strangers to 
all understanding of true spiritual potencies, ascribe to 
their idols the self-same efficacy. But they defraud them- 
selves with unwedded waters; for they are initiated, by 
washing, into certain of their sacred mysteries — as for ex- 
ample of Isis, or Mithras. Even their gods themselves 
they honor with lavations. Moreover, everywhere, coun- 
try seats, houses, temples and whole cities are purified by 
sprinkling with water carried around. So, it is certain 
they are imbued (tinguntur) in the rituals of Apollo and 
Eleusis; and they imagine this to accomplish for them 
renewing and impunity for their perjuries. Moreover, 
among the ancients, whoever was polluted with niurder, 
expiated himself with purifying waters. . . . We see here 
the'diligcnce of the devil, emulating the things of God, since 
he even administers baptism to his own."'!^ 

Here, Tertullian expressly designates these rites of the 
Gentile idolatries by the name of baptism, and represents 
them as imitations of the divinely appointed ordinance. 
Some he distinctly describes as sprinklings, and among 
them evidently refers to Ovid's representation of the dis- 
honest mer.chant, sprinkling himself to wash out his "perju- 
ries." He does not allude to immersion, and in fact that 
form of rite was not found among the Greek and Koman 
superstitions. The only difference which Tertullian recog- 
nizes between the idohitrous rites and Christian baptism is 
indicated by the phrase (viduis aqim), "unwedded," or 
" widowed, waters," by which he designates the element 
used in the pagan rites. His meaning, here, is to be found 
in the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, which already 
prevailed in the church; according to Avhich, it was be- 
lieved that, in baptism, in response to the invocation of 

*Tertull. de Baptisma, chapter v. 
17 



194 LATER TRACES OF SPRIXKLING. [Pakt V. 

the officiating minister, the Holy Spirit descended upon the 
water, imparting to it a divine jDOteucy to produce a new 
birth in the recipient of the rite. Thus, the waters of 
Christian baptism were married waters, as being capable 
of generating life; whilst the others were unmarried, — 
unendowed with any *' spiritual potency." 

It is further worthy of special notice, that Tertullian 
here refers, among other Gentile imitations of baptism, to 
that purgation for murder, by affusion of water, from which 
evidently Josephus derived his preposterous explanation of 
the sprinkling of the water of separation, for defilement by 
the dead. The probability is great that the Greek pur- 
gation was derived from that appointed for the elders of 
Israel, in the case of a concealed murder. 

Jerome, living between K. D. 340 and 420, comments 
thus upon Ezekiel xxxvi, 25-27. — "I will pour out or 
sprinkle (effundam sive asj^ergam), upon you clean water 
and ye shall be cleansed from all your defilements. And 
I will give you a new heart, and I will put a right spirit 
within you. ... I will pour out the clean water of saving 
baptism. ... It is to be observed that a new heart and a 
new spirit may be given by the pouring out or sprinkling 
of water." Again, he paraphrases; — " I will no more pour 
out on them the waters of saving baptism, but the waters 
of doctrine and of the word of God."— Jerome v, 341. 

Ambrose, bishop of Milan from A. D. 374 to 391, thus 
expounds the 7th verse of Psa. li.— " He asks to be cleansed 
ivith hyssop, according to the law. He desires to be washed 
according to the gospel, and trusts that if washed he will 
be whiter than snow. He who would be purified by typi- 
cal baptism was sprinkled with the blood of a lamb, by a 
hyssop bush."* 

Again he says, "He (the priest), dipping the living 
sparrow, with cedar, scarlet and hyssop, into water in 
which had been mingled the blood of the slain sparrow, 

* Ambrosii Opera, in Psa. li. 



Skc. xliv.] allusions in the fathers. 195 

sprinkled the leper seven times, and thus was he rightly 

purified By the cedar wood, the Father, by the 

hyssop the Sou, and by the scarlet wool, having the bright- 
ness of fire, the Holy Spirit, is designated. With these 
three, he was sprinkled who would be rightly purified, be- 
cause no one can be cleansed from the leprosy of sins, by 
the water of baptism, except through m vocation of the 
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. . . . We are 
represented by the leper." * 

V Again, addressing the newly baptized, he says, — " You 
took the white garments, to indicate that you cast away 
the cloak of sin and put on the spotless robe of innocence ; 
whereof the prophet said : ' Thou shalt sprinkle me with 
hyssop and I shall be clean, thou shalt wash me, and I 
shall be made whiter than snow.' For he that is baptized 
appears cleansed both according to the law and the gospel ; 
according to the law, since Moses, with a bunch of hyssop 
sprinkled the blood of a bird ; according to the gospel, be- 
cause the garments of Christ were white as snow, when, 
in the gospel, he showed the glory of his resurrection. He 
whose sins are forgiven is made whiter than snow."t 

Cyril lived in the n^xt century. He was bishop of 
Alexandria, A. D. 412-444. In his exposition of Isaiah 
iv, 4, he says, '' We have been baptized, not with bare 
water, nor with the ashes of a heifer, — We are sprinkled 
[with these] to purify the flesh, alone, as says the blessed 
Paul,— but with the Holy Spirit, and fire." 

Thus, from the translation of the Old Testament into 
Greek down through the time of Christ and the apostles, 
and to the middle of the fifth century, the Levitical sprink- 
lings were known and designated as baptisms. Further 
we need not trace them. 



* Ibid., in Apocal. cap. 6. 

t Ibid. Lit. ad initiandos. c, 7. 



196 STATE OF THE ARGUMENT, [Part VI. 



Part VI. 

STATE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ARGUMENT. 

Section XLV. — Points established by the foregoing Evidence. 

A REVIEW of the preceding pages will discover the 
following points to have been established. 

1. Baptism was a rite familiar among the Jews at the 
time of Christ's coming, and not a new institution then 
first introduced. 

2. Paul being witness, it was an ordinance imposed on 
Israel at Sinai, as part of the Levitical system. 

3. There is no trace, in the Levitical law, of an ordi- 
nance for the immersion of the person, in any circum- 
stances, or for any purpose whatever. 

4. There is not, anywhere, in the Old Testament an 
allusion to immersion as a symbolic rite, nor a figure de- 
rived from it, although those Scriptures are full of allusions 
and figures referring to the symbolic import of the pouring 
and sprinkling of water. 

5. There was an ordinance for the immersion of cer- 
tain things very slightly defiled ; wiiich at once illustrates 
the ritual value of immersion as compared with sprinkling, 
and the plainness of the language where immersion was 
meant. 

6. The baptisms, therefore, to which Paul refers as 
having been "imposed on" Israel, could not have been 
immersions, and the word, baptizo, did not in his vocabu- 
lary mean, to immerse. 

7. The only institutions to which he can have referred 
are comprehended under the two heads of, administered 
rites, and self-performed washings. 



Sec. XLV.] POINTS SO FAR ESTABLISHED. 197 

8. The self-washings were not sacraments, or seals of 
the covenant, but monitory symbols of duty, 

9. The gradation of these washings, the frequency and 
circumstances of their observance, and the limited iacilities 
available, render it impossible that they can have been 
immersions. 

10. Their symbolic significance, the words used to de- 
scribe them, the customs as to ablutions, and the washings 
of the priests in the court of the sanctuary, and of the 
high priest in the holy place, concur to demonstrate that 
they were ablutions performed by affusion. 

11. The administered rites were sacramental seals of 
the covenant. They were essentially one in meaning, office, 
and form ; and were invariably performed with a hyssop 
bush, by an official administrator, sprinkling the recipient 
with living w^ater, in which was the blood or ashes of 
sacrifice. 

12. In the Hellenistic Greek, the language of the Sep- 
tuagint, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament, these 
jDurifications by sprinkling were called baptisms, and they 
were known and designated by that name by the primitive 
fathers of the Christian church. 

13. These sprinklings of the law were the "divers 
baptisms" of Paul. So far, therefore, from haptizo meaning 
to dip, cr, to immerse, and nothing else, it is an indisputa- 
ble fact that for at least fifteen hundred years after the 
first institution of the rite, baptism was always performed 
by sprinkling. 

14. The ordinance was first instituted to seal the cov- 
enant by which the church of God was founded in Israel; 
and that form of it in which the ashes of the red heifer 
were used was divinely appointed as the ordinary rite for 
the reception of applicants to the privileges of that cove- 
nant and church. 

15. Its symbolism set forth all that is recognized in 
the Scriptures as meant by Christian baptism. Especially 



198 STATE OF THE ARGUMENT. [Part VI. 

aud distinctively was it the sacrament of the purification, 
or remission of sins. 

16. The figure presented in the form of sprinkling or 
pouring is derived from the rain descending out of heaven, 
penetrating the earth and making it fruitful; and it signi- 
fies the Spirit of life from God imparted to the dead, en- 
tering the heart, purging its corruption, and creating new 
life. To the case of indwelling corruption, with reference 
to which this rite was aj^pointed, no external washing, such 
as immersion is supposed to represent, can be of any avail. 

17. Afl^usion is the constant form of action in the rit- 
ual law, whether with water, blood, or oil, to signify the 
efficient agency of the Lord Jesus, in all the functions of 
administration in his mediatorial office. 

18. The recipients of the Levitical baptism, were, at 
its first institution, the whole congregation of Israel, old 
and young, thus purified from the defilements of Egypt, 
sealed unto the covenant of God, and installed as his 
church. Afterward, they were all, without distinction of 
sex, age, or nation, who having been suspended for any 
cause from the communion of the church of Israel, sought 
in the appointed way restoration; or who were received 
into it, as infants or proselytes. 

19. While this rite was the door of admission to the 
privileges of the covenant, at Sinai, and so long as the 
Levitical system survived, it is appropriated by the Spirit, 
as the chosen figure by which is set forth, in prophecy, the 
bestowal of the grace of Christ upon the Gentiles, in the 
gospel day, and upon Israel, restored. "So shall he 
sprinkle many nations." "Then will I sprinkle clean 
water upon you, and ye shall be clean." 

20. The figures of speech corresponding to the forms 
of sprinkling and pouring appear everywhere in the Old 
Testament. Pervading and determining the entire struc- 
ture or'the ritual law, they reappear continually, in the 
historical records, in the devotional and penitent utterances 



Sec. XLV.] POINTS SO FAR ESTABLISHED. 199 

of the Psalmist, the discourses of the Preacher, and the 
expostulatioDS and warnings of the prophets, and in their 
glad anticipations of the grace of the coming Messiah. 
With one and the same spiritual meaning everywhere, 
these figures pervade and control the whole texture of 
thought and mode of expression of the sacred writers. 

21. This rite of purification by sprinkling was not only 
thus familiar to Israel, but, under corrupted forms, it had 
been disseminated throughout the civilized world; so that 
when the apostles went forth to carry the gospel to the 
nations, the ideas of sin and guilt, defilement and cleansing, 
thus nourished, were a very important element in the prov- 
idential preparation of the world to appreciate and accept 
the salvation of Christ. While such was the case, the fact 
is equally significant that among the nations contiguous to 
Israel there is no trace of ritual purification by immer- 
sion, — a form of observance which, had it existed in 
Israel, could not have failed of imitation by her idolatrous 
neighbors. 

Thus assiduously and multifariously were the people of 
Israel taught, and trained — by instructions, by warnings, 
by promises, by rites and ceremonies, enjoined and observed 
at the sanctuary and at home, which laid hold upon them 
in every relation of their being and every function of their 
lives — to conceive of themselves in all their sinfulness and 
need, and of the coming Messiah in his oflSces of grace, in 
the light of this ordinance, and according to the similitude 
embodied in it. For fifteen centuries these influences 
were continually at work, until the very bent and tendency 
of their thoughts and conceptions, in so far as they yielded 
themselves to the divine agencies thus applied, were 
moulded to the forms of those rites. 

In view of the facts thus developed, two questions pre- 
sent themselves for thoughtful consideration as we proceed 
with our inquiry. (1.) Is it to be imagined that John and 
Jesus, in coming to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testa- 



200 



STATE OF THE ARGUMENT. 



Part VI. 



ment, which were embodied in sprinkled baptism, would 
ignore that ordinance, and silently substitute in its place 
the rite of immersion ; thus bringing to naught and repu- 
diating the products of the divine discipline so assiduously 
pursued through all those centuries, and dissolving every 
tie of association between the gospel of Christ and the 
hopes and expectations which the saints had been taught 
to cherish, by the unanimous testimony of the law, the 
prophets, and the Psalms, all speaking in the language of 
the repudiated rite? (2.) Since the name of baptism, was, 
beyond question the designation used for the Levitical 
sprinklings, how else can we understand John, Christ, and 
the apostles, than as meaning the same thing, in the similar 
use which they make of the same word? 




The Greek Bath.— From Sir. Wm. Hamilton's 
in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Koman 
Antiquities ; article "J?a?KeoE." 



Book II. 
NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 

Part VII. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

Section XL VI. — State of ilw Question. 

BEFORE entering upon an examination of the New 
Testament, it will be well to notice distinctly what, at 
this stage of our inquiry, is the precise state of the ques- 
tion to which our attention is directed. In a word, two 
rites present themselves, each claiming to be the true and 
legitimate ordinance which Christ commanded to be dis- 
pensed to all nations. 

On the one hand is the ritual sprinkling of water. In 
this rite, we have an ordinance instituted at Sinai by di- 
ving command, with specific directions as to the mode of 
observance, and abundant exemplification in the history 
of Israel and the writings of the Old Testament, — an ordi- 
nance by which the tribes of Israel and the Gentile chil- 
dren of Midian were both alike received and sealed unto 
the covenant of God, — its rites replete with the richest gos- 
pel meaning, as expounded by poets and prophets, and 
constituting in connection with the Lord's supper, a clear 
and symmetrical representation of the whole plan of grace. 
In this ordinance, the sprinkling of water for the ritual 
purging of sin, is a lucid symbol of the very baptizing 
office which is now fulfilled from the throne of heaven by 
Him whom John fore-announced as the Baptizer with the 
Holy Ghost. That the doctrine which the New Testament 
identifies with Christian baptism was symbolized by the 



202 NE W TESTAMENT INTR OD UCTOR Y. [Part VII. 

ordinance, in its Old Testament form, can not be success- 
fully questioned ; nor that there was a beautiful symmetry, 
congruity and significance in each several part and feature 
of the observance. It thus stands forth, luminous with 
most precious gospel truth. Appointed of God at Sinai, as 
the most fitting form under which to figure the first act of 
His grace, in the bestowal of salvation on sinners, — honored 
as the rite by which the church was at the beginning con- 
secrated to her exalted ofiice, as God's witness and herald 
to the nations, — it comes to the New Testament church, 
hoary and venerable with a history of fifteen centuries, — 
embalmed and hallowed by commemoration in the poetic 
strains of the psalmist and the brightest visions of the 
prophets, and fragrant from association with the profound- 
est and most precious experiences of God's people, in all 
those centuries, and with every beam of hope for a better 
life beyond, which shone into their stricken hearts, in the 
times of bereavement and mourning. It comes, its image 
indelibly stamped on the face of God's word, and its con- 
ceptions therein transmitted to blend with the clearer visions 
of hope revealed to the gospel church, by Him, in whom 
life and immortality are brought to light. 

On the other hand is that form of observance in which 
the person of the subject is immersed in water, as a sym- 
bol of the burial of the Lord Jesus. For this rite, no 
higher antiquity is claimed, by its advocates, than that in- 
volved in its supposed institution by the Lord Jesus, after 
his resurrection. It has no precedent in the Levitical rit- 
ual, nor place among the figures employed by the Old Tes- 
tament writers.' The prophets did not foreshadow it in 
their imagery, nor the psalmist in his strains. All other 
rites of divine authority, are distinctly described, both as to 
office and form. But, of the rite of immersion, there is 
neither description nor explanation anywhere in the Scrip- 
tures. Its evidence stands wholly in definitions, contrary 
to the unanimous testimony of lexicographers, unsustained 



Sec. XLVI.] STATE OF THE QUESTION. 203 

by any broad inductions from the facts and analogy of 
Scripture, and at variance with the conclusions which such 
induction demands. 

And when we examine the relations and details of the 
rite, we find incongruity and contradiction conspicuously 
displayed. If the rite be regarded as a typical seal of the 
covenant of grace, as are all sacraments, it follows that 
tlie administrator represents the Lord Jesus, administering 
the true baptism, the real seal of that covenant. But, if 
ba])tism is by immersion, to represent the burial of the 
body of the Lord Jesus, we are reduced to the alternative 
that the office of the administrator means nothing, in which 
case we have a burial with no one to perform it ; — or, that 
he represents Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus; by 
whom the body of Jesus was laid in the sepulcher. 

Again, in the Scriptures everywhere, and esjDecially, 
and in the most express terms, by the Lord Jesus himself 
(John iv, 14; vii, 37-39), living water is recognized as the 
divinely appointed symbol of the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit 
of quickening and life. How beautifully and richly appro- 
priate to this purpose it is, we have seen. But, according 
to the immersion theory, the dipping of the person in this 
element, — that is, mersion in water of life, represents the 
consigning of the body of Jesus to the grave, the den of 
corruption and death ! 

Besides, the supposed resemblance of this rite to the 
burial of Christ's body is a transparent misconception. It 
results from the transfer to Palestine of ideas derived from 
the wholly different western method of interment. In the 
sense required by immersion, Jesus never was "buried." 
The sepulcher of Joseph, in which his body was laid was 
not a grave, but a spacious above-ground chamber. Such 
were its dimensions that, at one time, on the morning of 
the resurrection, there were present in it "Mary Magda- 
lene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and other 
women," at least five or six persons, and with them the 



204 NE W TESTAMENT INTR OD UCTOR Y. [Part VII. 

two angels before whom they fell prostrate. (Luke xxiv, 
1-10.) To this day, the hillsides around Jerusalem and 
throughout Palestine are pierced with innumerable such 
chambers, excavated horizontally in the rock, and frequently 
used as dwellings by the present inhabitants. Such was 
the sepulcher of Jesus, — an artificial chamber with a per- 
pendicular door, so that Peter and John and the women 
could by stooping walk into it. — John xx, 5-8. The entomb- 
ing of Jesus was no more a burial, in the sense required 
by the immersion theory, than was the laying of the body 
of Dorcas in an upper chamber. (Acts ix, 37.) The sup- 
posed similitude of immersion in water is a figment of the 
imagination, in entire disregard of the real facts. 

But, even should we allow the ordinance to be a true 
and fitting symbol of the burial of Christ, it remains void 
of all spiritual significance. Study it as we may, it teaches 
nothing, — it means nothing. In all other sacraments the 
plan of salvation, in one or other of its grand features, is 
lucidly represented. The Lord's supper is the acknowledged 
symbol of Christ's atonement and death, and of the man- 
ner in which he imparts to his people the benefits of that 
death, — while they by faith feed upon his broken body. 
According to the immersion theory, baptism represents and 
shows forth the burial of the dead body of Jesus, contra- 
distinguished from his death, as symbolized in the Lord's 
supper. But that burial is a thing wholly unimportant 
and insignificant, in itself, whether viewed as to the fact or 
the mode. No emphasis is ever in the Scriptures put upon 
either, nor spiritual meaning attributed to them. Thus, if we 
admit immersion to a place among the ordinances, it must 
remain a mere form, shedding no ray of divine light, — an 
opaque spot among the luminaries in the instructive con- 
stellation of Scripture rites. The result moreover of accept- 
ing this ordinance is, to strip the New Testament church 
of all sacramental knowledge of the power and glory of 
Christ's triumphant sceptre. In Levitical baptism, the 



Skc. XLVI.] STATE OF THE QUESTION. 205 

Old Testament church had a most beautiful pledge of 
his triumph over death aud a symbol of his grace shed 
down from the throne of his glory. But, upon the immer- 
sion theory, all this is utterly ignored in the New Testa- 
ment ritual, aud all attention directed to the humiliation, 
sufferings and death, — one sacrament setting forth his 
death, and the other his burial; whilst both are left void 
of meaning ; since the intent of the abasement can only be 
found in his exaltation, and the baptizing office exercised 
from his throne. We are to believe that at the very 
moment when his exaltation became a glorious reality, 
and his baptizing office an active function, and when these 
facts had become the very crown and sum of the gospel 
thereupon sent forth to the world, all trace of them was 
obliterated from the sacramental system, to the marring of 
its symmetry and the utter destruction of its completeness 
and adequacy as a symbolical gospel. 

Moreover, it is the office of the rite of baptism, to seal 
admission to the benefits of the covenant, in the bosom of 
the visible church. Appropriate to this office, the Old 
Testament rite was a symbol of that renewing and cleans- 
ing which the Lord Jesus by his Spirit gives, in the be- 
stowal upon his people of the benefits of the better covenant, 
and the fellowship of the invisible church. The same im- 
port is attributed to baptism throughout the New Testa- 
ment. But in the rite of immersion, as symbolizing the 
burial of the Lord Jesus, not only is this meaning excluded, 
but the ordinance has no conceivable congruity to the office 
which it fills. Dr. Carson attempts to evade this difficulty 
by the assumption that there are two distinct emblems in 
baptism, — one, of purification by washing; another of 
death, burial and resurrection, by immersion.* Then, we 
are to understand that in baptism, the administrator repre- 
sents at once, the men by whom the body of Jesus was laid 
in the sepulchre, aud the Lord Jesus himself, dispensing 

* Carson on Baptism, pp. 2G5-268. 



206 NE IV TESTAMENT INTR OD UCTOR V. [Paut VII. 

the baptism of his Spirit ! The water symbolizes both the 
grave which is the abode of death and corruption, and the 
Holy Spirit of life ! And the immersion of the person of 
the baptized represents at one and the same time, the 
placing of the body in the grave, and the bestowal of his 
Spirit by Jesus, for quickening and sanctifying his peo- 
ple ! Manifestly, the two sets of ideas thus brought to- 
gether, as involved and represented in the one form, are 
wholly irreconcilable. They are not merely incongruous, 
but mutually destructive. To assert water, in one and the 
same act, to signify the Spirit of life, and the corruption 
of the grave ; or an immersion to symbolize, at once, the 
burial of the dead body, and the quickening of dead 
souls, is to deny it to have any meaning at all. The rite 
may be labelled with these incongruous ideas. But they can 
not be made to cohere in it. The theory ignores and con- 
tradicts the true nature of the rites of God's appointment; 
which are not mere mnemonical tokens, but representa- 
tive figures, ordained as testimonies, which convey intelligible 
expression of their meaning by their forms ; and are there- 
fore constructed upon fixed and invariable principles, and 
characterized by definiteness and unity of meaning. 

Are these difficulties evaded by falling back to the posi- 
tion of the first Baptist confession, — that baptism " being 
a sign, must answer the thing signified, which is, the 
interest the saints have in the death, burial and resurrection 
of Christ ; and that as certainly as the body is buried un- 
der the water and risen again, so certainly shall the bodies 
of the saints be raised by the power of Christ, in the day 
of the resurrection ?" This is, to abandon the very citadel 
of the cause, which consists in the position that the form 
and meaning of the ordinance are to be determined by a 
strict interpretation of the classic meaning of the w^ord 
baptizo. That word never means "burial and resurrec- 
tion," — the immersion and raising up of the subject. It 
sometimes means a submersion; that, and nothing more. 



Sec. XLVI.] 



STATE OF THE QUESTION. 



207 



This is now distinctly admitted by the ablest representatives 
of the immersion theory, as we shall see abundantly 
evinced before we close. 

Such are some of the considerations that present them- 
selves, as, at this point in our inquiry, we view the two 
diverse rites which assume the name of Christian baptism. 
Their claims are now to be judged, by a comparison of the 
New Testament evidence, with what has been already con- 
centrated from the law, the prophets, and the Psalms; — 
writings all of them equally authoritative and divine. 




TheGkeekBath.— Thegod,Eros,preside8. From 
Sir. Wm. Hamilton's vases, in Smitli's Dictionary 
of Greek and Eomaa Anticiuities ; articlo"ifui?iece." 



208 PURIFYINGS OF THE JEWS, [Part Vill. 



Part VIII. 

THE PURIFYIlSrGS OF THE JEWS. 

Section XL VII. — Accounts of them in the Gospels. 

THE fact has been referred to already tliat at the great 
passover, in the days of Hezekiah, to which the rem- 
nant of the ten tribes were invited by the king, *'a multi- 
tude of the people, even many of Ephraim and Manasseh, 
Issachar and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet 
did they eat the passover otherwise than it was written," 
not being "cleansed according to the purification of the 
sanctuary;" that, thereupon, a plague was sent among 
them ; but at the intercession of the king, the Lord healed 
the people. (2 Chron. xxx, 17-20.) In the law, it appears 
that, at the entreaty of certain persons, who, at the regu- 
lar time of the passover, were defiled by a dead body, pro- 
vision was made for a second passover, to be kept a month 
later, by such as, by reason of defilement, or absence at a 
great distance, could not keep it at the appointed time. 
(Num. ix, 6-11.) These facts illustrate the statement of 
John respecting a certain occasion when the "passover 
was nigh at hand; and many went out of the country up 
to Jerusalem before the passover, to purify themselves." — 
John xi, 55. The self- washings could all be performed by 
the people at home. But, in the later period of Jewish 
history, the ashes were kept at Jerusalem, and the sprink- 
ling of the unclean usually performed there by the priests 
aloue. Hence, the coming of these Jews to Jerusalem for 
purifying before the feast. It is thus evident that at all 
the annual feasts, the preparatory purifying of the people 
must have been a very conspicuous feature of the occasion, 



Src. xlvil] accounts in the gospels. 209 

a fact of no little significance, as bearing upon the observ- 
ances in the Eleusinian mysteries, already referred to. 

We have shown the name of baptism to have been 
used to designate both the Levitical rite of sprinkling 
with the water of separation and the ritual purifyiugs 
invented by the scribes. With the growth of ritualistic 
zeal, the occasions for the latter observances were multi- 
plied. The earliest allusion to them, in the life of our 
Savior, appears in connection with his first miracle, wrought 
in Cana of Galilee at the marriage feast. "There were 
set there six water pots of stone, after the manner of the 
purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins 
apiece." — John ii, 6. That this provision for the purposes 
of ritual purifying upon such an occasion was absolutely 
necessary, in obedience to the traditions of the scribes, 
will presently appear. 

The next occasion on which these rites come into notice, 
is recorded by Luke. In the course of our Lord's second 
tour through Galilee, after having preached the gospel to 
a vast concourse, "a certain Pharisee besought him to dine 
with him: and he went in, and sat down to meat. And 
when the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that he had not 
first baptized {ebaptisthe) , before dinner. And the Lord 
said unto hiin, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the out- 
side of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is 
full of ravening and wickedness. Ye fools, did not he that 
made that which is without make that which is within 
also? But rather give alms of such things as ye have; 
and behold all things are clean unto you." — Luke xi, 
37-41. 

The next incident is mentioned very briefly by Matthew 
(xv, 1-9), and more fully in Mark. The apprehensions 
of the rulers at Jerusalem seem to have been aroused by 
reports of Christ's ministry, and the excitement caused by 
it among the people of Galilee. And as they had formerly 

sent messengers to challenge John, so, now, scribes and 

]8 



210 PURIFV/NGS OF THE JEWS. [Paut VIII. 

Pharisees from Jerusalem were on the watch to find occa- 
sion against Jesus. And "when they saw some of his 
disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with un- 
washen hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees and 
all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, 
holding the tradition of the elders. And when they come 
from the market, except they baptize (ean me baptisontai) , 
they eat not, and many other things there be which they 
have received to hold, as the baptisms (baptismous) , of cups 
and pots, brazen vessels and tables" (or "beds." So the 
margin and the Greek.) — Mark vii, 1-4. 

These are the only places in which the ritual purifyings 
of the Pharisees are so mentioned as to shed light upon 
the subject of our inquiry. In them, we trace three dis- 
tinct observances. These are enumerated by Mark, Avho 
represents them as common to "the Pharisees and all the 
Jews." They are, (1) Washing the hands, before meals; 
(2) Baptism, after coming from the markets; (3) The 
baptisms of utensils and furniture. 

Section XL VIII. — Washing the Hands before Meals, 

It appears to have been a custom, enjoined by tradi- 
tion and observed by all the Jews, always to wash the 
hands ritually before eating. The origin and meaning of 
the tradition may probably be inferred from a few Scrip- 
tural fiicts. (1.) Flesh was used for sacrifice, before it 
was given to man for food. Compare Gen. i, 29; iv, 4; 
viii, 20; ix, 3. It was thus transferred from the altar to 
the table. (2.) One essential idea in the Levitical system 
as to sacrifice, was communion of Israel with God at his 
table. Of this, the passover was but one among many 
illustrations which the books of Moses contain. (Deut. 
xii, 17, 18, 27, etc.) (3.) Hence, all eating of flesh was 
treated as sacrificial in its nature, and, therefore, the pro- 
hibition of blood — a prohibition perpetuated in the church 
by the apostles. (Gen. ix, 4; Lev. xvii, 3-14; Deut. xii, 



Skc. XLVIIL] WASHING THE HANDS. 211 

20-27; Acts xv, 20, 29.*) If, to these facts be added 
the rule which required the priests to wash themselves 
before entering upou their official duties, one of which was 
the eating of the sacrificial flesh in the holy j^lace, and the 
words of the Psalmist, — *'I will wash mine hands in inno- 
cency, so will I compass thine altar, O Lord" (Psa. xxvi, 
6), we will have the probable foundation of the ritualistic 
structure. 

As to the mode of these washings, the rules given in 
the ritual law are very significant. But two cases in which 
the washing of tlie hands w'as required are there found. 
One of these is the washing of the hands of the elders in 
expiation of a concealed murder. (Deut. xxi, 3-9.) Here 
the circumstances render it certain that the water was 
poured on the hands. The other is mentioned in Lev. xv, 
11, where the English, '' rinsed," represents the Hebrew, 
shataph, to dash, or pour on with violence. If the Jews 
imitated the Levical rites they did not immerse their hands. 
Mark throws but little light upon the mode of the Phari- 
saic washing. In the expression, " except they wash their 
hands oft,'' the last word of the original (pugme, — " oft"), 
probably had a technical meaning, by wdiich the mode Avas 
designated. But if such was the case, that meaning has 
been lost. By some writers, it is interpreted, " to the el- 
bows, " to the wrist," " with closed fist," etc. But all this 
is mere conjecture, as is the opinion of Dr. Lightfoot, that 
it denoted a certain form of the aflfiision of water upoii 
the hands. 

The account of the marriage feast affords ground for 
surer deductions. There were set six water pots of stone, 
holding two or three firkins apiece. Whatever were the 

* This is not the place to enlarge upon the present obliga- 
tion of this law. In the ahove places, the reader will find it, 
as at first p;iven to Noah, as expounded and perpetuated under 
the Levitical dispensation, and as ajrain re-enforced upon the 
Gentile churches by the apostles. When and why was it ab- 
rogated ? 



212 PURIFYINGS OF THE JEWS. [Part VIII. 

rites referred to by Mark, under the two designations of 
*' washing the hands," and " baptism," it was necessary that 
sufficient water should be provided for all occasions of both 
kinds which were likely to occur, in the large concourse 
of wedding guests, of whom Christ and the apostles were 
but a small proportion. For, whilst the guests, generally, 
were expected, of course, to make use of the ordinary rite, 
by w^ashing their hands, there might be numbers who had 
incurred such exposure as to require the appointed baptism. 
What, then, are the indications as to the nature of the 
rites thus provided for? 

The capacity of the water-pots, accordiug to the most 
probable estimate, was not more than ten gallons each. 
The highest supposition sets them at about eighteen. They 
were, therefore, altogether too small to have been used as 
bath-tubs, for the immersion of the guests. The possibility, 
therefore, of such a necessity, did not enter into the calcu- 
lations of those who provided for the occasion. Were the 
w^aterpots, then, used for immersing the hands? The cus- 
toms of the east, then and to this day, — the fact that Jesus 
and his disciples evidently appear as but a small propor- 
tion of the guests, — and the quantity of wine miraculously 
made by Jesus for their supply, unite to certify that the 
great body of the community of Cana was present at the 
feast. The first suggestion, therefore, that presents itself 
is, that the supposed process must soon have rendered the 
water disgusting, from its use in the manner supposed, by 
a succession of persons. Another and conclusive fact is 
the use made by our Savior of these waterpots.. The feast 
had been some time in progress, so that the guests had 
" well drunk," before the exhausting of the wine. All had 
been purified, and the pots, appropriated to that use, stood 
with the remaining water, as thus left. When, Jesus said 
to the servants, — "Fill the waterpots with water," "they 
filled them to the brim," and immediately carried the wine 
to the governor of the feast. The servants were ignorant 



Sec. XL VII I.] WASHING THE HANDS. 213 

of the purpose of Jesus, aud, as tlie narrative shows, sim- 
ply did as they were directed. There was no emptying of 
foul water. There was no cleansing of the waterpots. 
There is no consciousness, manifested in the narrative, of 
occasion for it. Nor was there time. It was in the midst 
of the feast ; and the wine was already exhausted, although 
the ruler of the feast and the guests were unaware of 
it. (V. 9.) Tlie account of the transaction w^as written by 
John, an eye-witness, for the information of coteraporaries 
who were famiHar Avith the rites of purifying, whatever 
they were. And had they been performed in the water, in 
any way, an explauation was necessary^ or the inference 
became inevitable that the vessels were used just as they 
stood. In these circumstances, is it to be imagined that 
the waterpots already contained the washings of the guests ; 
or even that they were emptied of these and then appro- 
priated as recepticles of the Avine, which was immediately 
served to the very persons who had just washed in them ? 
Clearly, the facts compel the conclusion that "the purify- 
ings of the Jews," here provided for were not done in the 
waterpots, but with water taken from them, and poured or 
sprinkled on the guests. 

This conclusion is confirmed by the exi:>licit testimony 
of the rabbins. Kabbi Akiva was a doctor of the law of 
the most eminent reputation, his disciples being numbered 
by thousands. He was president of the sanhedrim, less 
than one hundred years after the death of Christ. Being 
made prisoner by the Romans, upon tlie suppression of the 
insurrection of Bar Kokeba, of which he was an active 
promoter, he was thrown into prison awaiting execution. 
When food was brought to him, the jailer thinking the 
supply of water too liberal, poured the greater part on the 
ground. The rabbi althougli famishing of thirst, directed 
what remained to be ponred upon Jiis hands, saying, "It is 
better to die witli thirst than to transgress the traditions 
of the elders." 



214 PURIFYINGS OF THE JEWS. [Part VIII. 

Section XLIX. — Baptism upon return from Market. 

Another point in Mark's statement is, that, '*Wheu 
they come from the market, except they baptize, they eat 
not." Here, it would seem that Mark means somethiupc 
different and more important than the ordinary washing of 
the hands, to which he has just before referred. It is an 
additional statement, of other rites employed on special 
occasions. The word, agora, which is translated ''the 
market," has a much more extensive signification than the 
English word. Its primary meaning is, a concourse, an 
assembly, of any iind. And while it was used among 
others, to designate the assemblies for traffic, and hence 
the places of such assemblies, it is not, in the text, to be 
understood in that limited sense ; but as comprehensive of 
all promiscuous assemblages of the people, in which a per- 
son was liable unwittingly to come in contact with the un- 
clean. It w^as upon occasion of our Savior's coming from 
such an assembly, that the Pharisee of whom Luke informs 
us was surprised that he had not first baptized before din- 
ner. He had been preaching in the midst of a multitude 
"gathered thick together" (Luke xi, 29), when he re- 
ceived and accepted the invitation to dine. He had thus 
been exposed to a contact which the Pharisees would have 
carefully avoided, as liable to involve them, unaware, in 
the extremest defilement, and to render necessary special 
rites of purifying. This was undoubtedly the cause of the 
surprise of the Pharisee at the conduct of Jesus. 

As to the mode of the baptism here referred to, the 
gospels are silent. In favor of the supposition that it was 
immersion, there is nothing whatever in the Scriptures. It 
rests wholly upon the assumption that that is the meaning 
of baptizo. The circumstances all very strongly fiivor the 
conclusion, that as the major defilements of the Mosaic law 
were all purged by sprinkling, so this, the major defile- 
ment of Pharisaic tradition was cleansed in a kindred way. 



Skc. XLIX.] BAPTISM AFTER MARKET. 215 

Among the indications in favor of this conclusion are, the 
fact tliat the provision made for purifying at the marriage 
feast exchides the idea of immersion ; — the entire silence of 
the Scriptures as to any facilities for that purpose ; — the in- 
congruity of the supposition to the circumstances of Jesus, 
in the act of sitting down at the Pharisee's table ; — the ab- 
sence from the narrative of any allusion to means provided 
by the Pharisee for the performance, in that mode, of a 
rite by him so highly esteemed, and for which special pro- 
vision was necessary; — and the improbability of such a form 
gaining prevalence among "the Pharisees and all the 
Jews," involving, of necessity, both expense and labor, to 
an intolerable extent. If, on the contrary, as we may 
reasonably su2:)pose, the house of the Pharisee was provided 
with appliances, " after the manner of the purifying of the 
Jews," they would consist of water pots set at the door, as 
at the marriage feast, out of which the guests, as they 
entered, could take water for pouring on their hands, or 
baptizing their persons by sprinkling, Avithout inconven- 
ience or delay. 

We have formerly seen that the self-washings of the 
Mosaic law, — in which alone its advocates have ever pre- 
tended that immersion may be found in the Old Testa- 
ment, — were of continual recurrence in every family. We 
find in the time of Christ the rites supplemented by those 
now in question, which were of even more frequent occasion. 
If they were performed by self- washing, by affusion, or by 
sprinkling, such provision of vessels as thus indicated was 
all-sufficient. But if they were immersions of the person, the 
almost daily necessities of every family would have required 
not only an extraordinary supply of water, but a capacious 
bath tub in every house. Without such a vessel and 
supply, at home, immersion of the person, with the frequency 
required, was not merely improbable; it was impossible. 
But such arrangements would have involved an amount 
of expense and of labor wliich no people could endure. 



216 PUIUFYINGS OF THE 'JEWS. [Part VIII. 

If we open the Scriptures to inquire whatsis their testi- 
mony on this point, on which, if the system of immersion 
was in operation, some hints could not fail to appear, we find 
that the one only statement or allusion is contained in the 
account of the six water pots at the marriage feast. They 
were set " after the manner of the purifying of the Jews." 
This expression, alike in itself, and in the attendant cir- 
cumstances, as already considered, is exclusive of the sup- 
position that any purifying rite was observed among the 
Jews, for which the water pots were not a sufficient pro- 
vision. In short, all the evidence concurs to determine 
that " the purifying of the Jews," however performed, was 
not by immersion of the person. 

Section L. — A Various Reading. 

There is a various reading, in the Greek manuscripts, 
which is full of meaning with reference to our present in- 
quiry. Whilst many manuscripts, including the Alexan- 
drian, which is referred to the fifth century, read baptisontai, — 
" except they baptize they eat not," (Mark vii, 4); the two 
oldest and of the highest authority, the codices Sinaiticus 
and Vaticanus, both dating from the fourth century, and 
with them numbers of a later date, read, rantisdntai, " ex- 
cept they sprinkle they eat not." The presumption is very 
strong in favor of rantisdntai being the true reading. Its 
bearing on the logical connection of Mark's statement is 
worthy of not^. According to it, he describes three classes 
of rites. He specifies, first, self-washings of the hands, as 
always used before dinner ; second, certain sprinUings, re- 
sorted to upon supposition of more serious defilements ; ijnd 
third, baptisms of pots and cups, etc., the modes of j^urify- 
ing, for which, prescribed in the law, were various. The 
relation of these purify in gs to those appointed by Moses 
is apparent. They coiucide with the self- washings, the 
sprinklings, and the purifying of things prescribed by 
him. The various readiugs here involve considerations of 



Skc. l.] a various heading. 217 

great importance. As before stated, rantisdntai is the read- 
iug of the two oldest aud most highly esteemed manuscripts, 
dating back to within about two hundred and fifty years of 
the death of the apostle John. These manuscripts are 
recognized by critical scholars as being so far independent 
of each other that their various readings indicate the gradual 
divergence which would progress from copy to copy through 
several generations of manuscripts ; so that the reading on 
which they unite must have originated, if not with the 
evangelist, at least very soon after the first publication of his 
gospel. On the other hand, the reading, baptisdntai, first 
found in the Alexandrian codex, of the fifth century, ap- 
pears in the great majority of extant manuscripts. We 
may confidently conclude that there must have been earlier 
copies of high authority in which this reading was found. 
It thus appears that at a time but little if any removed 
from the age of the apostles, these two readings existed 
side by side in the received copies of the gospel. 

This fact is the more significant in view of the jealous 
care with which the purity of the New Testament text was 
guarded. So long as the last of the apostles survived, his 
inspired authority was an available resort on all questions 
of controversy, arising in the churches. (2 Cor. xi, 28 ; 
3 John 9, 10.) During this period, the importance of an 
absolutely pure text of the writings of the apostles and 
evangelists was not fully appreciated. The work of tran- 
scription was left to the zeal of private individuals, who 
were often wanting in the necessary qualifications; whilst 
there was no system of responsible revision. It was prob- 
ably during this period, closing about fifty years after the 
death of the apostle John, that the most important varia- 
tions and errors crept in. About that time, the importance 
of a pure text, as an authoritative standard of appeal on 
questions of controversy, began to be felt; and, thereafter, 
great vigilance was exercised by the officers of the church 
in securing correct copies. The transcriptions were made 

19 



218 PURIFYINGS OF THE JEWS. [Pakt VIII, 

from tlie best and most accurate manuscripts. And when 
a copy was made, it appears to have been subjected to a 
critical revision, after having been first collated usually by 
the scribe himself, with the copy from which it was taken, 
for the purpose of correcting any clerical errors, that might 
have occurred in the transcription. The manuscript was 
then handed over to "the corrector," whose business it was 
to revise the text by a comparison with other available 
manuscripts. In this office the services of the most learned 
and able men in the church were employed; and it was 
not until sanctioned by such revision that a manuscript 
was accepted as an authentic copy. Beside the process 
here described, the ancient manuscripts abound in changes 
made by subsequent critics. The codex Siuaiticus exhibits 
alterations '' by at least ten different revisers, some of them 
systematically spread over every page, others occasional or 
limited to separate portions of the manuscript, many of 
them being cotemporaneous with the first writer; far the 
greater part belonging to the sixth or seventh century, a 
few being as recent as the twelfth."* 

In view of the diligence of the criticism thus systemat- 
ically exercised, the fact is very remarkable that the two 
readings, baptisontai, and rantisdntai should have been 
transmitted side by side, and traceable back nearly to the 
apostolic age. And it is further remarkable, that no one 
of the ten successive critics whose revisions are traceable 
on the codex Sinaiticus has corrected the place in question 
so as to read baptisontai, although it is certain that reading 
did extensively prevail. Nor is the variation alluded to in 
the waitings of the fathers. It is immaterial to the present 
argument which is the true reading. If it was raniisontai, 
the language of Mark explains the meaning of Luke. 
What the Pharisee expected was that Jesus should have 
baptized himself by sprinkling. And, whichever is the true 

'•'Scrivener's Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus, Introduc- 
tion, p. XX. 



Sec. LL] BAPTISMS OF THINGS. 219 

reading, this fact is patent that at an age so early as to be 
undistingiiishable from that of the apostles and evangelists, 
so intimate was the relation between sprinkling and bap- 
tism that the one word was inadvertently substituted for the 
other, in transcription ; and the alteration received by the 
ablest men in the church, without question or protest, then 
or afterward, or the betrayal even of a consciousness of 
change ; despite the watchfulness of a criticism systematic 
in its exercise and jealous for the purity of the text. If 
the primitive church understood baptism to mean immer- 
sion, if the rite Avas administered in that, as the only 
Scriptural mode, the occurrence of the case here presented 
would have been plainly impossible. It could only happen 
where the two words were identified as designating the 
same rite. How easily the w^ords might be confounded 
will appear by a comparison of them as written in the 
primitive Greek, known as uncials, or capital letters : — 

BAnTIZS2NTAI. 
PANTIZi2NTAI. 

AVere the first and third letters dimly written, or 
blurred, the one word might readily be taken for the other. 

Section LI. — Baptisms of Utensils and Fiivniture. 

Another point in Mark's statement is the baptisms of 
cups and pots, brasen vessels and tables. It is unneces- 
sary to insist upon the argument which is deducible from 
the practical impossibiUty of the immersion of these things; 
nor to notice the theories which have been devised to over- 
come the difficulties w^iich it interposes to the Baptist 
mode. The reader who has followed the course of this 
history will recognize, in the Levitical ordinances respect- 
ing the purifyings of things, the source whence w\as de- 
rived the hint of these supererogatory rites. And a com- 
parison of the various Mosaic regulations on the subject w^ill 
satisfy the candid reader that the list here given is not de- 
signed to be exhaustive, but an exemplification merely of 



220 PURIFYINGS OF THE JEWS. [Part VIII. 

the observances in question. This is further evident from 
the fact that the enumeration, as made by the Lord Jesus 
(v. 8) , was of pots and cups, only ; which Mark in his 
subsequent account ampKfies by the other additional exam- 
ples. Respecting them, the ritual of Moses provided modes 
of purifying varied both with respect to the nature of the 
things to be cleansed, and the character of the defilements; 
as we have formerly seen. We may well suppose that the 
scribes did not fail to imitate every form of the legal pur- 
ifyings, in their additions to the law of God. It is not 
only possible, but very probable that some of these inven- 
tions were in the form of immersion. For, as we have for- 
merly seen, that was one of the forms appointed in the 
law, for the purifying of things. But the evangelist speaks, 
not of one, but of various rites ; which he designates by the 
plural and generic name of (baptismous) , — baptisms. The 
word thus selected is the very same which is used by Paul 
as the comprehensive designation of the purifying rites of 
the Mosaic law, — the " divers baptisms," imposed at Sinai. 
The conclusion is therefore irresistible, that whilst Paul 
used the the word in a generic sense, as comprehending the 
various forms of legal purification, among which the im- 
mersion of person is not to be found, Mark uses it in 
a like generic sense as comprehensive of the various forms 
for the purifying of things, among which immersion may 
have been one, although, if such was the fact, the proof is 
yet to be produced. 

The result of our examination is, that among the Phar- 
isaic rites, no trace of the immersion of the person is to be 
found. 



Sec. LIL] HISTORY OF JOHN'S MISSION. 221 



Part IX. 

JOHN'S BAPTISM. 
Section LI I. — The History of Johnh Mission. 

THE account of John's ministry in the evangelists, is 
invariably introduced by an appeal to the prophecies 
which foretold his coming and office. A remarkable pas- 
sage from Malachi is alluded to by the angel Gabriel, in 
announcing to Zacharias the birth of the forerunner (Lake 
i, 17), and by Mark in his introduction to the gospeL 
r^Iark i, 2). A prophecy of Isaiah is cited in all the gos- 
pels ; as is also John's own account of his commission and 
office. It will be convenient for the purposes of the pres- 
ent discussion to bring these passages together. Says the 
Lord by Malachi, " Behold, I wull send my messenger, and 
he shall prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom 
ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the Mes- 
senger of the covenant whom ye delight in ; behold he shall 
come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the 
day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appeareth? 
For he is like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap ; and he 
shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he shall 
purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, 
that they may oflTer unto the Lord an oflTcring in righteous- 
ness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be 
pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in 
former years. And I will come near to you to judgment, 
and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers. . . . 
Remember ye the law of Moses my servant which I com- 
manded unto him in Horeb, for all Israel, with the stat- 
utes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the 



222 yOHN'S BAP 7 ISM. [Part IX. 

prophet, before the comiog of the great and dreadful day 
of the Lord ; and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to 
the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, 
lest I come and smite the earth" (the land of Israel) 
"■ with a curse." — Mai. iii, 1-5 ; iv, 4-6. 

The citation from Isaiah (xl, 3-5), together Avith John's 
exposition of it, is thus given by Luke. "John came into 
all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of 
repentance for the remission of sins; as it is written in 
the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, 
The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the 
way of the Lord ; make his paths straight. Every valley 
shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought 
low ; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough 
ways shall be made smooth ; and all flesh shall see the sal- 
vation of God. Then said he to the multitude that came 
forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who 
hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring 
forth, therefore, fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not 
to say within yourselves. We have Abraham to our father; 
for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to 
raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the axe 
is laid unto the root of the trees; every tree, therefore, 
which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn dowm, and 
cast into the fire. ... I indeed baptize you with Avater; 
but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose 
shoes I am not worthy to unloose; he shall baptize you 
with the Holy Ghost and with fire; whose fan is in his 
hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and will 
gather the wheat into his garner; but the chafl' he will 
burn with fire unquenchable." — Luke iii, 3-17. In John's 
gospel, some additional points are given. "John seeth 
Jesus coming unto him, and saith. Behold the Lamb of 
God w^hich taketh a^vay the sin of the world. This is he 
of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred 
before me; for he was before me. And I knew him not; 



Sec. LIL] HISTORY OF JOHN'S MISSION. 223 

but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore 
am I come baptizing with water. And John bare record, 
saying, I saw the ISpirit descending from heaven, like a 
dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not, but 
He that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto 
me. Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and 
remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with 
the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record, that this is 
the Son of God."— John i, 29-34. 

The title by which, in the prophecy of Malachi, the 
Lord Jesus is designated, — " the Messenger of the covenant" 
carries us back to the scene at Sinai, when the covenant 
was made and sealed. In the close of the prophecy, our 
attention is expressly directed to that occasion. "Remem- 
ber the law of Moses, which I commanded unto him in 
Horeb, for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments." 
The intimations thus given lead us up to the originating 
occasion of John's testimony. 

Immediately after the coming of Israel to Sinai, among 
the communications which expounded the covenant, pre- 
paratory to its sealing, the Lord said to them, "Behold I 
send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and 
to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Be- 
ware of him and obey his voice. Provoke him not, for he 
will not pardon your transgressions; for my name is in 
him."— Ex. xxiii, 20, 21. This Angel is by the Lord 
elsewhere called "My Presence" (Compare Ex. xiv, 19; 
xxxii, 34; xxxiii, 2, 14, 15), and by Isaiah, "the Angel 
of His presence." — Isa. Ixiii, 9. He is thus announced to 
Israel as sent to be God's servant in the fulfilling of the 
Sinai covenant, and is hence by the prophet called "the 
Messenger of the covenant." 

Another line of facts leads in the same direction. 
When, at the mount, Israel was overwhelmed with the 
terror of the great fire and of God's audible voice, and 
entreated Moses, "Speak thou with us, and we will hear; 



224 yOHN'S BAPTISM. [Paut IX. 

but let not God speak with us lest we die" (Ex. xx, 19; 
Deut.v, 22-27), their proposal thus to accept Moses as 
Mediator between them and God was graciously approved. 
"They have well said, all that they have spoken." — Deut. 
V, 28. Moses was accepted in that office, and Israel dis- 
missed from the assembly at the mount. (lb. 28-31.) 
But, afterward, Moses revealed to them how much more 
richly their abasement and prayer had been answered than 
they had asked or imagined. "The Lord thy God will 
raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of 
thy brethren like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken; 
according to all that thou desiredst of the Lord thy God in 
Horeb, in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not 
hear again the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me 
see this great fire any more that I die not. And the 
Lord said unto me, They have well spoken that which 
they have spoken. I will raise them up a prophet from 
among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my 
words in His mouth; and He shall speak unto them all 
that I shall command Him." — Deut. xviii, 15-18. Com- 
pare John xiv, 31 ; xvii, 8, 14. 

We are thus brought to the relation which Moses and 
the Sinai covenant, sustained to the Lord Jesus, and that 
better covenant of which he is the Mediator. (Heb. viiii, 6.) 
The covenant of Sinai as formally accepted by Israel and 
ratified through the mediation of Moses, was of unspeakable 
moment, as being the installation of the visible church. 
But it was, at the same time, an outward type, a manifes- 
tation and announcement of the covenant of grace made 
with the invisible church. Of the one, Moses was the 
Mediator ; — of the other, the Lord Jesus. The one is 
founded upon the public professions and promises of Moses 
and the assembly of Israel (Ex. xxxiv, 27) ; — the other 
on the engagement of the Lord Jesus to fulfill all righteous- 
ness. The former was graven on tables of stone ; the lat- 
ter is written in the fleshly tables of the hearts of Christ's 



Skc. LIII.] THE STATE OF JEWS. 225 

people. (Jer. xxxi, 33 ; 2 Cor. iii, 3 ; Heb. viii, 10.) The 
former was sealed with the blood which was partly sprinkled 
on the Sinai altar, and partly mingled with water and 
sprinkled on Israel ; the latter, with the blood of sprinkUng 
of Jesus Christ offered in the holy place in heaven, and the 
baptism of the Spirit which, through the merits of that 
blood, he gives his people. 

We can now see the bearing of certain memorable 
words uttered by the Lord Jesus. When Moses sealed the 
covenant, he sprinkled the book and the peoj^le with the 
sacrificial blood and water, saying, "Behold, the blood or 
the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you con- 
cerning all these words." At the table, the night of the 
betrayal, the Lord Jesus took the cup, and having given 
thanks, gave it to the disciples, saying, "This is my blood 
of the new covenant, which is shed for many, for the re- 
mission of sins." — Matt, xxvi, 28. He thus signified the 
typical nature of the transaction in the wilderness, as relat- 
ing to him, and announced himself about to fulfill all that 
it foreshadowed. Particularly did his language, by appro- 
priating that of the Sinai baptism , recognize both it and the 
supper as symbols and seals of the remission of sins, of 
which his own blood bestows the reality. 

To the same relation between the Sinai transactions and 
Christ's office and work, Peter bears w^ituess. A few days 
after Pentecost, upon occasion of the healing of the impotent 
man, he reminded the wondering assembly of the promise 
made by Moses to the fathers. — "A prophet shall the Lord 
your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto 
me. . . . Yea and all the prophets, from Samuel and those 
that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise 
foretold o/ i/iese f?a?/s." — Acts iii, 22-24. 

Section LIII. — lArael at tlw Time of John^s Coming. 
When John came, the Jews had been for four hundred 
years without a prophet, or any sensible token of God's 



226 JOHN'S BAPTISM. [Paut IX. 

presence among them. The captivity and return from 
Babylon and subsequent circumstances m their history had 
effectually and finally cured the inveterate tendency to 
idolatry, which had characterized them from the days of 
the Egyptian bondage. But this change did not bring with 
it an awakening of true spiritual devotion to the service 
of God. Instead thereof an intense zeal of self-righteous- 
ness was cherished, under the two forms of a fanatical 
pride in the blood of Abraham, and an ardent devotion to 
the external forms and rites of religion, to tithes and offer- 
nigs, to fastings and purifyings, — to "righteousnesses of the 
flesh," — whilst the spirituality and power of the divine law 
were obscured and set aside by the glosses and interpreta- 
tions of the elders. Such was the religion of the scribes, 
who " sat in Moses' seat," as the instructors of the people. 
The great mass of the- nation, led by these blind guides, 
were with them hastening to destruction ; while the few 
who still sought after the God of their fathers were as 
sheep without a shepherd. In the meantime, Jerusalem 
and Judea had been the prey alternately of the Ptolemies 
of Egypt, the Seleucidse of Syria, and factions among 
themselves. After the successful revolt of the Maccabees, 
a brief time of peace and prosperity was enjoyed under the 
sceptre of that family. But the rivalry and seditions of its 
members brought in the Eomaus, under whose patronage 
the Herodian family, of Edomite origin, had come into 
power. 

During the progress of these events, the whole land had 
been polluted with crimes and atrocities of every kiud, and 
of the deepest dye. The high priesthood was habitually 
subject to barter and sale, one possessor of the office giving 
place to another in rapid succession, as the respective aspi- 
rants were able to purchase the office from the kings of 
Syria, or of Judea, or to seize it by violence or the favor 
of the rabble. The temple itself had been desecrated by 
being formally set apart to the worship of Jupiter Olym- 



Sec. LIII.] THE STATE OF JEWS. 221 

pius. And as though that was Dot enough, it had been 
yet more horribly defiled by fratricidal blood ; an aspirant 
for the high priesthood having secured and held the office by 
the murder of his own brother, in the very precincts of the 
temple. The entire social system was rotten, and the na- 
tion was fast ripening for the developments about to be 
witnessed, in the denial and crucifixion of the Son of God, 
the rejection of the gospel, and the crimes which precipi- 
tated society into a chaos of anarchy and a reign of terror, 
ending in the destruction of the temple, the desolation of 
Jerusalem, and the dispersion of the nation to this day. 

Thus, when John began his ministry, the land of Is- 
rael, the city, the temple, and the nation were lying under 
the burden of the unexpiated and unrepented crimes of 
many centuries. (Matt, xxiii, 29-36.) The covenant was 
forfeited and trampled under foot, and the laud and the 
people were, in every sense, moral and ritual, utterly un- 
clean. At the beginning of the declension, the prophet 
Haggai had been sent to the priests with a lesson out of 
the law. — "Ask now the priests concerning the law, say- 
ing. If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and 
with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, 
or any meat, shall it be holy ? And the priests answered 
and said. No. Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean 
by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? 
And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean. 
Then answered Haggai, and said. So is this people, and so 
is this nation before me, saith the Lord : and so is every 
work of their hands, and that which they offer there is 
unclean." — Hag. ii, 11-14. After the cotemporaneous 
ministries of Haggai and Zechariah, the Spirit of prophecy 
was withdrawn for about one hundred years. Then sud- 
denly, a trumpet note from Malachi broke the silence, with 
a brief and startling call. — " If ye will not hear, and if ye 
will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith 
the Lord of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and 



228 yOHN'S BAPTISM. [Part IX. 

I will curse your blessings. Yea I have cursed them al- 
ready. . . . From the days of your fathers, ye are gone 
away from mine ordinances and have not kept them. Re- 
turn unto me, and 1 will return unto you, saith the Lord 
of hosts." — Mai. ii, 2 ; iii, 7. But they did not return. 
Thereupon, God their King withdrew from all communi- 
cation with them as a people, for four centuries following. 
Such was the situation of that people at the coming of 
John. They had the oracles of God, his ordinances, and 
his temple; of which Haggai had said, — "I w^ill shake all 
nations; and the Desire of all nations shall come, and I 
will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts." — 
Hag. ii, 7. But all this was as a piece of holy flesh in the 
skirt of a garment. It did not purify the nation, while 
their uncleanness defiled these and all their hallowed things. 

Section LIV. — The Nature and End of John's Baptism. 

Whilst Israel was thus apostate and excommunicate from 
God, the Messenger of his covenant was about to appear, 
in that character the aspect of which, as toward the rebell- 
ious and unbelieving, had been especially emphasized in the 
prophecies above cited ; and the exercise of which resulted in 
the desolation of the land, and the dispersion of the nation a 
byword and a hissing in all lands. *' Beware of him and 
obey his voice. Provoke him not ; for he wdll not pardon 
your transgressions ; for my Name is in him." — Ex. xxiii, 
21. " Who may abide the day of his coming? And who 
shall stand when he appeareth?" — Mai. iii, 2. So, John 
announced him. — " Whose fan is in his hand, and he will 
thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the 
garner, but he will burn up the chaflE" with unquenchable 
fire." — Matt, iii, 12. His coming was, to Israel, the great 
crisis in their history. Therefore the mission of John. 
Said the angel to Zacharias, "He shall go before Him in 
the Spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the 
fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom 



Skc. liv.] nature of his baptism. 229 

of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the 
Lord."— Luke i, 17. 

When the ten tribes had forsakeu the worship of God 
on mount Zion, abandoned his covenant, and devoted 
themselves to the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth, Elijah 
was sent to them as the vindicator of the forsaken cove- 
nant, and messenger of grace, of warning and of judgment. 
His first work was to demonstrate the sovereignty and God- 
head of Jehovah, and the imbecility of their false gods, by 
the famine of three years and six months, and by the fire 
from heaven consuming both sacrifice and altar on Car- 
mel. He then executed judgment upon the prophets of 
Baal and Ashtoreth, the seducers of Israel, eight hundred 
and fifty in number. On this occasion, Israel professed to 
recognize and do homage to the God of their fathers. But 
Elijah saw too clearly, that it was a conviction without 
root in their hearts and affections. When therefore he re- 
ceived Jezebel's message of vengeance, his faith failed, and 
he fled to the wilderness, where he w^as fed by an angel and 
led forty days and forty nights " to Horeb the mount of 
God," the spot w^here the covenant w^as made and sealed 
with the twelve tribes. (1 Kings xix, 8, 9.) "And he 
came thither unto a cave and lodged there; and behold 
the word of the Lord came to him, and He said to him, 
What dost thou here, Elijah?" The interview held at 
that place exhibits the prophet as the ordained champion 
and avenger of the covenant. To the foregoing question 
twice proposed, he twice responds, — "I have been very 
jealous for the Lord God of hosts : for the children of Is- 
rael have /orsa/c€?i iliy covenant, thrown down thine altars; 
and slain thy prophets with the sword ; and I, even I, only, 
am left; and they seek my life to take it away." — ^vs. 10, 
14. Thereupon, he was commissioned to anoint Hazael, 
king over Syria; and Jehu king of Israel, and Elisha to 
be prophet in his stead ; — " And it shall come to pass that 
him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay; 



230 yOHN'S BAPTISM. [Part IX. 

and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha 
slaj. Yet I have left seven thousaDd in Israel, all the. 
knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth 
which hath not kissed him." — vs. 15-18. 

The office thus fulfilled by Elijah, as a messenger of 
grace, calling Israel back to the allegiance of the abandoned 
covenant ; and of wrath, announcing and inflicting its pen- 
alty upon the transgressors, is the key to the closing Avords 
of the book of Malachi. — *' Eemember ye the law of Moses 
my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all 
Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will 
send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the 
great and dreadful day of the Lord ;" the day, to wit, of 
the coming of " the Messenger of the covenant ;" " and he 
shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the 
heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and 
smite the land wdtli a curse." — Mai. iv, 4-6. The same 
characteristics of John's ministry were the occasion of the 
statement of the angel Gabriel to Zacharias, before cited, 
*' He shall go before Him, in the Spirit and power of 
Elias." In the points here noticed, we have the explana- 
tion of the scene of the transfiguration, in which Moses, 
the mediator of the Sinai covenant, Elijah its vindicator 
against apostate Israel, — and Jesus, the mediator of the 
new covenant, talked together " of his decease which he 
should accomplish at Jerusalem," on behalf of the true Is- 
rael, and in fulfillment of the terms of the new covenant, 
typified in that of Sinai. (Luke ix, 31.) 

The same office, of warning and testimony on behalf 
of the forsaken covenant, which Elijah exercised toward 
the ten tribes, John fulfilled to the Jew^s. To understand 
the full force and significance of his mission, the fiict must 
be distinctly appreciated that Christ's humiliation and suf- 
ferings, however momentous in themselves, and however 
transcendently important to us, w^ere a mere transient 
incident in the work undertaken by him. His coming into 



Sicc. LIV.] NATURE OF HIS BAPTISM. 231 

the world was a coming to the throne, to which the cross 
was a mere stepping stone, — a means to his exaltation, 
and to the achievements of his sceptre, in purging the 
Father's floor. In those achievements, justice and judg- 
ment are as conspicuous as grace; and if the latter wit- 
nessed a first signal and glorious display in the scenes of 
Pentecost, the former was as signally illustrated in the 
destruction and desolation of the city and land that re- 
jected their King. It was Avith a view to the crisis thus 
created in the history of Israel by the coming of Christ, 
that John was sent as his forerunner and herald. John did 
not ignore that abasement of Christ which was the antece- 
dent condition and means of his exaltation and glory. 
But his distinctive theme, the subject which filled his 
heart and inspired his tongue, was the throne, the kingdom, 
the power and justice. Of it he was the official herald, 
and from it his preaching and baptism took their form and 
significance. His commission was threefold ; (1) To an- 
nounce the kingdom of heaven at hand, and herald the 
coming of the King, the Messenger of the covenant, the 
Baptizer with the Holy Ghost and with fire; (2) To iden- 
tify and point him out in the person of Jesus; (3) To 
prepare the way before him. In fulfillment of the first 
and second of these functions, John preached the coming 
of "One Miglitier than I," who should baptize Israel with 
the Holy Ghost and with fire. He pointed out and an- 
nounced the Lord Jesus as that coming One, — **the Lamb 
of God that taketh away the sin of the world," — "the Son 
of God." And by connecting this testimony with his proc- 
lamation and baptism of repentance for the remission of 
sins, he anticipated the preaching of the apostles, and 
summed and published the gospel of atonement and remis- 
sion through the blood of Christ. By this preaching and 
by the seal of baptism to those who received his testimony ^ 
he fulfilled the third function above mentioned, and " made 
ready a people prepared for the Lord." — Luke, i, 17. 



232 yOHN'S BAPTISM. . [Part IX. 

There were two termini to which John's baptism sus- 
tained pecuHar and intimate relations, and from which his 
ministry derived all its significance. The first was that 
" day of the assembly" at Sinai, when Israel entered into 
the covenant by which she took God as her King and 
received the baptismal seal sprinkled by the hand of Moses. 
It was the office of John to announce the personal com- 
ing of the King of Israel; to warn them of the penalty 
of the violated covenant; announce the remission of sins 
and restoration of the covenant, to those who should re- 
pent and return to their allegiance; and to certify this 
by the renewal of the broken seal. 

The second terminus to which John's baptism looked 
was that day when the covenant King of Israel should 
appear ,in person, assume his throne, and enter on tlie 
functions announced by John, under the figures of the 
baptism of the Holy Ghost, and the baptism of fire. Of 
the former, so conspicuous in the prophecies, the baptism 
of Israel by Moses, and that now administered by John, 
were alike typical. The grace of the Holy Spirit, admin- 
istered by the enthroned Baptizer, was the end and fulfill- 
ment of both. 

Section LV. — TJie Extent of John's Baptism. 

The public ministry of John commenced about six 
months before the baptism of Jesus, and was ternjinated 
by his imprisonment soon after that event. (Mark i, 14; 
Luke iii, 20, 21.) At first, his preaching was peripatetic. 
"He came into all the country about Jordan, preaching." — 
Luke iii, 3. But as his fame extended and the throng of 
his hearers increased, he took his station at Bethabara (or, 
Bethany, as the critical editions read), on the eastern side 
of the Jordan, and afterward at "Enou, near to Salim," 
where he seems to have been, when arrested by Herod. 
During the brief period of his ministry, there "went out 
to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the re2:ion round 



Sbc. lv.] extent of his baptism. 233 

about Jordan, and were baptized of him in Jordan, con- 
fessing their sins." — Matt, iii, 5, 6. The facts as to the 
extent of John's ministry and baptism, are stated in terms 
equally strong by Mark and Luke. (Mark i, 5 ; Luke iii, 
2L) Of these statements, we are asked to believe that 
they are extravagant hyperbole, — that they only mean 
that there were some present from every place in the 
regions specified. As " if I should say that in the political 
convention of 1840, all Tennessee was gathered at Nash- 
ville to hear Henry Clay, I would not mean that every man, 
woman, and child in the State was there; but only that 
there were some from every part. Just so, Matthew says 
Jerusalem came,^that a great many people from Jerusa- 
lem and Judea and the country round about Jordan came. 
That is to say, the country as well as the city was fully 
represented in the crowd. Besides, John did not baptize 
all who came. He positively refused the Pharisees and 
Sadducees, who composed a great part of the Jewish na- 
tion."* This explanation forgets that the language in 
question is not the exaggerated statement of excited and 
partisan newsmongers; but sober history dictated by the 
Spirit of God, and reported to us by "two or three wit- 
nesses," in concurrent language. As to the assertion con- 
cerning the Pharisees, every thoughtful reader of the gos- 
pels knows that in comparison with the whole body of the 
people, they were very few. In all their conspiracies 
against Jesus they were constantly embarrassed by fear of 
"the people." 

Of the vastness of the multitude who w^ere baptized by 
John we have not only the express testimony of the evan- 
gelists, but certain incidents related by them remarkably 
confirm it. The first is, that Herod was restrained, for 
some time, from the murder of John, by fear of the peo- 
ple, " because they counted liim as a prophet." — IMatt. xiv, 5. 

*Theodosia Ernest, Vol.1, p. 79. Published by the Baptist 
Publication Society. 

20 



234 yCHN'S BAPTISM. [Pakt IX. 

Another is, the use made of the same popular sentiment, 
by the Lord Jesus. A few days before his betrayal and 
death, upon occasion of his second purging of the temple, 
the rulers came to him demanding by what authority he 
did these things. Jesus answered, "I will also ask you 
one thing ; and answer me : The baptism of John, Was 
it from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with 
themselves, saying, If we shall say. From heaven ; he will 
say, Why then believed ye him not ? But and if we say, Of 
men ; all the people will stone us : for they be persuaded 
that John was a prophet. And they answ^ered, that they 
could not tell w^hence it was." — Luke xx, 3-7; Matt, xxi, 
24; Mark xi, 29. Such and so strong and universal was 
the conviction of the people, that John's commission was 
from God, that neither Herod nor the Avhole united body 
of the priests, scribes and elders, — the great council of the 
nation, — dared to antagonize it. This, too, was three years 
after the close of John's ministry. 

It may be said that no intimation is here given that 
the people spoken of had been baptized of John. But, in 
the first place, the evangelists had already expressly stated 
the universal fact, in their distinct account of his ministry, 
and did not, therefore, need to repeat it; and, in the sec- 
ond, the issue involved in his ministry was too vital and 
sharply defined to allow any to profess, even, to recognize 
his divine authority, and yet neglect his baptism. But 
there is yet further testimony on the point. 

Jesus had been preaching about two years, when John 
from his prison sent two of his disciples to ask, — "Art thou he 
that should come, or do we look for another?" On this 
occasion Jesus uttered a testimony concerning John, of 
which it is said that, "all the people that heard him, and 
the publicans, justified God, heinc) baptized with the baptism 
of John. But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the 
counsel of God against themselves ; being not baptized of 
him." — Luke vii, 29, 30. This occurred in Galilee, which 



Sec. LV.] EXTENT OF HIS BAPTISM. 235 

district was uot included in any of the statements of the 
evangelists, respecting the attendance on John's niinistiy. 
He does uot seem ever to have preached in Galilee. And 
yet, from that comparatively distant region, the people had 
so flocked to his baptism, tliat two years afterwerd the evan- 
gelist could state that all the people had been baptized of 
him, the lawyers and Pharisees excepted, and find in this 
the ex2)lanation of the universal acceptance of Christ's tes- 
timony. The exception here greatly strengthens the former 
clause of the statement, and establishes the fact of the 
universal reception of John's baptism -by the common people. 
In fact, this conclusion is involved in the very nature 
of the circumstances of Israel. However viewed, the 
ministry of John created a most momentous crisis in the 
history of God's dealings with that people. John came to 
them, the fore-announced, — the last, — the greatest, of all 
the prophets. He came on the loftiest mission that had 
ever been entrusted to man, — to act as the immediate per- 
sonal messenger and herald of the coming King. He came 
to Israel, excommunicate from God, to call them indi- 
vidually, and as a peoj)le, to repent and return to the fold 
of God's longsufferiug mercy ; and to seal the offered grace, 
by baptizing those who professed to obey his call. The 
alternative which his ministry set before them was plain 
and imperative. To absent themselves, or to attend on his 
preaching without receiving his baptism, would have been 
an open act of treason to the coming King, an express 
and aggravated rcj'ection of his authority and of this extraor- 
dinary and final overture of grace to the nation. John's 
ministry thus compelled a decision by which a broad and 
public line was drawn among the people. On the one side, 
were those who professed to repent and return to the for- 
saken covenant and God of their fathers, and to own the 
authority of the promised King of Israel ; and whose pro- 
fession was sealed by the reception of John's baptism ; — 
on the other, those who, in rejecting John's testimony and 



236 yOHN'S BAPTISM. [Part IX. 

turning their backs upon his baptism, repudiated the com- 
iug King and spurned his overture of mercy. Of the sig- 
nificance and importance of all this, the evangelists were 
fully aware. To suppose them in such circumstances to 
have indulged in a loose and exaggerated style of statement, 
asserting that Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region 
round about Jordan were baptized, when, in fact, not one 
in a hundred of the people received the rite, w'ould be a 
contradiction of the diviue testimony, which nothing but 
ignorance and lack of consideration can excuse or palliate. 
It is further to be considered that every class of the 
people, and both men and women resorted to John's bap- 
tism, the lawyers or scribes, that is, the Pharisees and 
Sadducees, only excepted. (Matt, xxi, 31, 32; Luke vii, 
29 ; XX, 6.) 

5. His rejection of the Pharisees is adduced as proof 
that "though great multitudes came to John and followed 
Christ, yet comparatively few brought forth fruit to justify 
their baptism."* But how is it supposed that John could 
know any thing, ordinarily, as to the fruits manifested by 
those w^ho sought his baptism ? It is perfectly evident 
that, — as at Sinai, on the day of Pentecost, and on every 
other occasion that is on record in the ministry of the 
apostles, — so, in the case of John's hearers, — a good pro- 
fession was the sole ordinary condition of baptism. Is it 
asked, — How, then, came John to refuse the Pharisees? 
That he did, in fact, refuse them, is an assumption, without 
proof or probability. He warned them ; and that is all 
we are told of the matter. As to the occasion of such 
warning, — the ruling sin. of that sect was self-righteousness. 
The pride of it found expression in unmistakable tokens. 
Says Jesus, "All their works they do for to be seen of men. 
They make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders 
of their garments." — Matt, xxiii, 5. The phylacteries were 
parchments on Avhich portions of the law were written. 

■*Theodosia Earnest, vol. i, p. 80. 



Sec. LVL] IT WAS NOT IMMERSION. 237 

They were folded iu the form of* a cube, and bound to the 
forehead or the arm, with ribbands. The borders were 
fringes and ribbands of blue, which God directed Israel to 
wear on the skirts of their garments, as a memorial of their 
covenant relations to him. (Num. xv, 38, 39.) These the 
scribes and Pharisees made broad, so as to be seen of men. 
The first step therefore toward a true repentance, on their 
part, would have been a putting off of these badges of self- 
righteousness. And their being worn by any of John's 
hearers was to him an instant and evident token of vain 
glory and self-righteousness unabased ; whilst putting them 
off would have been a manifest fruit and evidence of re- 
pentance. 

The facts, therefore, as set forth in the gospels, clearly 
indicate that the ministry of John was attended by an ap- 
parent revival of religion, but little short of that which 
occurred at Sinai, when the covenant was first made. And 
although, like the tribes in the wilderness, many of those 
who received John's baptism failed to profit, for lack of 
true repentance and faith, — many brought forth fruit out 
of good and honest hearts. Of such, the college of the 
apostles was formed ; and of such, no doubt, largely con- 
sisted the firstfruits of the gospel, in Judea and Galilee, — 
as we see repeated traces of it in the ministry of Paul, 
among the far off Gentiles. (Acts xiii, 24, 25; xviii, 
25; xix, 3.) 

Section LYI. — Jolin did not Immerse. 

As to the mode of John's baptism, there are several 
circumstances which interpose insuperable objections to the 
supposition that it was by immersion. 

lo That form would have been utterly incongruous to 
John's office as the herald of the covenant. No rational 
account can be given of the origin and meaning of such a 
rite, in that connection. The Levitical law was, in all its 
ordinances, a testimcmy to the covenant; and of it John 



238 yOHN'S BAPTISM. [Part IX. 

was a minister. But in that law there Avas but oue admin- 
istered baptism, and that by sprinkling, Avhilst there were 
no immersions of persons, whatever. It therefore furnishes 
no trace of the origin of the supposed form. On the other 
hand, it certainly did not originate with John. Baptism, — 
the rite which he administered, was in his day, no novelty 
among the Jews. The only remaining supposition, if we 
assume John to have immersed his disciples, is, that it may 
have been borrowed from the inventions of the scribes. 
But, in the first place, there is not a trace of evidence nor 
of probability that such a rite was ilien included in the rit- 
ual of the scribes ; — and in the second, it is preposterous to 
suppose that, in such circumstances and on such a mission, 
John would have turned his back on the ordinances of 
God's law, by which for fifteen centuries the covenant had 
been sealed, and chosen for the characteristic and seal of 
his ministry one of those inventions by means of which that 
law was made void and God's people led astray. (Mark 
vii, 6, 8, 13.) This too, when he in the most open and de- 
cisive manner set Mmself in opposition to the inventors of 
those rites, whom he denounced as a generation of vipers ! 
2. The meaning of the rite, in supposed connection with 
John's ministry, is as inexplicable as its origin. Neither 
the law nor the Old Testament Scriptures anywhere give 
a clue to it. John in his ministry is equally silent. Or, 
rather, his statements are altogether incongruous to the 
supposed form. — '* He shall baptize you with the Holy 
Ghost, and with fire. Whose fan is in his hand, and he 
will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into 
the garner, but he will burn up the chaff with unquench- 
able fire." — Matt, iii, 11, 12. Thus, John, announced the 
Lord Jesus, not in his character of humiliation and death ; 
but in his exaltation and royalty, as he appeared at Sinai, 
the covenant King of Israel, — as he is now, the enthroned 
Baptizer, dispensing his Spirit and grace to his people, and 
pouring out the fire of his justice on his and his Father's 



Sec. L VI.] IT IVJS NOT IMMERSIO.Y. 239 

enemies. In such circumstances, and in connection with 
such a preaching, what meaning could the disciples of John 
liave discovered in the rite of immersion ? Respecting it, 
they ask no questions, and John makes no explanation. 
If it be supposed to have meant the burial of Christ, this 
much at least is certain, that the resemblance was not so 
close as to have been self-evident to the people. And even 
though understood by them in that sense, it would have 
been so far aside from the immediate intent and end of 
John's ministry, and so defective in its testimony, since it 
knows notliiug of the resurrection, that it would have been 
calculated to distract and perplex his hearers, rather than 
to serve the object of his preaching. But John was ex- 
plicit as to the meaning of his baptism. Whatever its form, 
it meant — 7iot the burial of the Lord Jesus, but the baptism of 
the Spirit by him dispensed. ^^ I baptize you with luater, but 
he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost." 

3. The great discomfort, and the gross indecency which 
are inevitably involved in the supposition that John im- 
mersed his followers are decisive against it. Neither had 
John a water-proof suit in which to officiate, nor were his 
auditors supplied with " immersion robes," nor change of 
garments, so needful, now% to obviate the discomfort and 
danger of the dripping attire. But this, even, is a less 
consideration than the indecent exposure which the sup- 
posed rite would have involved. The garments of the Jews 
were of two patterns. That next the person Avas in the 
form of a sleeveless shirt, descending to the knees. A sec- 
ond garment was of the same shape, but usually of more 
costly materials, which reached to the ankles. Over all 
were thrown one or two shawls or blankets, large enough 
to enAvrap the entire person. Beside sandals, which were 
not ordinarily worn, except by those in easy circum- 
stances, — these were the only articles of apparel. Those of 
the women were of nearly the same sha])e ; the distinction 
of sex appearing mainly in the materials and ornaments. 



240 yOHN'S BAPTISM. [Part IX. 

When at rest, the garments were left free. But in pre- 
paring for labor or for travel, they were drawn up to the 
knees, and fastened with a girdle at the loins, thus leaving 
the lower limbs unencumbered. That, with such clothing 
indecent exposure must have been a constant incident to 
the extemporaneous and hasty immersions which the Bap- 
tist theory requires, is manifest ; and the weight of the 
consideration needs no enforcing. 

4. The number resorting to John was such as to pre- 
clude the possibility of their having been immersed. When 
Israel came out of Egypt, they were "about six hundred 
thousand on foot, that were men, beside children; and a 
mixed multitude went up "also with them." — Ex. xii, 37, 38. 
When about to enter the promised land, the census was 
six hundred and one thousand, seven hundred and thirty 
men, from twenty years old and upward, beside the Levites, 
who numbered twenty-three thousand males from a month 
old. (Num. xxvi, 51, 62.) Upon this basis, the whole 
number of the people was between three and four millions. 
In the days of David, in the enumeration from which the 
tribes of Levi and Benjamin w^ere omitted, the number 
of fighting men was one million five hundred and seventy 
thousand. If we make a proportional addition for the 
omitted tribes, it gives a total of one million, eight hundred 
and fifty-five thousand seven hundred and fifty-four. These 
would represent a population of seven or eight millions. 
From two independent statements occurring in Josephus, it 
appears that the population, just before the destruction of 
the nation, was at least as much as four million souls.* If 
we suppose John to have stood in the water three hours a 
day, dufing the six months of his ministry, and to have 
administered the rite at the rate of one per minute, during 
the entire time, the total results of such miraculous labors 
and endurance, would have been about thirty-two thousand 
seven hundred and sixty persons baptized, that is, one in 

* Jewish war. II. xiv, 3; and VI. x, 3. 



Bkc.lvil] he sprl\kled pure water. 241 

every oue hundred and twenty-two of the people. Witli- 
out the intervention of miracle — and John did no mir- 
acle — even this was utterly impossible. And yet, how 
entirely it falls short of the statements of the evangelists, 
upon any candid interpretation of them, is evident. 

That the theory of immersion is encumbered with diffi- 
culties of the most serious nature must be evident to every 
c<audid reader. 

Section LVII. — John Baptized by Sprinkling with un- 
mingled Water. 

We are now to consider an important feature in the 
history of this rite, which has not yet been brought into 
distinct notice. It has appeared how thoroughly the 
sprinkled baptisms of the Levitical system are identified 
in their meaning and office with the prophecies concerning 
the sprinkling of Israel and the nations, and the outpour- 
ing of the Spirit, in the days of the Messiah. The point 
of present interest concerning those prophecies is, that in 
all the expressions referred to, the figure is that of w^ater 
alone, — the sacrificial elements never being alluded to in 
that connection. A coincident fact appears, with relation 
to John's ministry. In his own announcement he uses 
language which seems to be emphatic and exclusive, — '*I 
indeed baptize you with water'' — Matt, iii, 11; Mark i, 8; 
Luke iii, 16; John i, 26. So, Jesus says, — "John truly 
baptized with water" — Acts i, 5. And Peter refers to it 
in the same terms. (lb. xi, 16.) This form of expres- 
sion constantly used, and the antithesis always stated, 
between his baptism and that of the Holy Spirit, to be 
administered by the Lord Jesus, render it certain that 
John baptized with water alone, without any sacrificial 
elements. A careful examination of the prophecies above 
referred to and a consideration of the subject matter of 
John's preaching, may furnish the explanation of these 
facts. The Mosaic ritual was constructed with a view to 

21 



242 yOHN'S BAPTISM. [Part IX. 

a very full and systematic exjDosition of the gospel, in the 
symmetry of its parts and proportions. In the baptisms 
of that ritual, therefore, provision Avas made for showiug 
forth, not only the power and grace of the Lord Jesus in 
the bestowal of the Spirit, but, also, the virtue of his 
blood, which w^as the procuring cause of the Spirit's grace. 
But that blood is the token of humiliation and sufferings. 
On the contrary, the theme of the prophecies here referred 
to is, the exaltation and glory of Christ's throne, and the 
conquests of his saving scepter, after the days of humilia- 
tion and sorrow shall have been forever ended. This was 
the distinctive meaning of the water of the Sinai bap- 
tisms, and by the figure of the sprinkling or pouring of 
bare water, the prophets represent the same thing. 

So, when John came in the spirit and power of Elias, 
he did not, indeed, ignore the office of Christ as the aton- 
ing Lamb of God. But his distinctive commission, and 
the controlling function of his ministry was to herald the 
coming of their covenant King, in his exaltation and power 
to an apostate and rebellious nation — to warn them of 
the office which he would fill, and the judgment which he 
would execute, who should baptize them, not with the 
Holy Ghost only, but with fire also. As appropriate, 
therefore, to this, his office and message, he dispensed a 
baptism of water alone, which spake of authority, power, 
and royal grace, and omitted that element which signified 
humiliation and death. 

Whilst the rite was thus modified — its nature and sig- 
nificance remained the same. As already indicated, the 
quantity of ashes used in dispensing the Levitical baptism 
Avas so small as to be wholly inappreciable to the senses. The 
instruction therein conveyed was dependent upon the asso- 
ciation of ideas, and not upon the quantity of the elements 
used. The bestowal of the Spirit by the Lord Jesus, of 
necessity, presupposes the sacrifice of himself as the condi- 
tion and price of his exaltation and power, by which the 



Sic. LVII.] HE SPRINKLED PURE WATER, 243 

Spirit is sent and salv^ation bestowed. What the Levitical 
blood and ashes of sprinkling expressed the baptism of 
John implied. The two rites thus conveyed the same 
instruction, and filled the same office. They were essen- 
tially one and the same baptism. The latter form antici- 
pated the immediate sending forth of the gospel to the 
Gentiles, divested of the sacrificial system and the burdens 
of the ritual law. That they were the same in mode will 
not be questioned by any who have candidly traced the 
foregoing line of investigation. With an enumeration of 
some of the points therein involved, we will close this 
brancb of our subject. 

1. Hitherto the Baptist argument has been entrenched 
in the definition of baptizo. After the same example we 
now plant ourselves on the ascertained meaning and use 
of the word, as illustmted in the foregoing pages. We 
have found it to be the accepted designation for the admin- 
istered rites of Levitical purifying, which, in all their cir- 
cumstantial variations, were performed always by sprin- 
kling. The rite dispensed by John was an administered 
baptism. It was, therefore,' administered after the exam- 
ple of the Levitical system, by sprinklins". 

2. John was the herald and champion of the covenant, 
and the messenger of the Lord Jesus as its surety and 
king. His commission, as announced by [Malachi, was, in 
God's name, to admonish Israel to ''Eemember the law of 
Moses, my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb 
for all Israel, with the statutes and judcrments;"— ]\Ial. 
iv, 4.— ''The law of Moses,"— that covenant law bv the 
acceptance of which Israel became the people of God. 
His ministry derived all its significance from the terms of 
that covenant, and from the office of its Suretv, in purging 
his^ floor with the baptisms of the Holy Ghost and of fire. 
This was the whole theme of his ministry-, as it was the 
whole substance of the prophetic terms of his commission. 
To seal such a testimony, no rite could have been so appro- 



244 yOHN'S BAPTISM. [Pakt IX. 

priate as the perpetuated and familiar form of the Sinai 
baptism, the original seal of the same covenant, by ^vhich 
its scope and intent were so luminously set forth. 

3. John preached the baptism of repentance for the 
remission of sins, in the name of Him whom God was 
about to exalt "to be a Prince and a Savior, for to give 
repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." — Acts v, 31. 
In the Levitical baptism the administrator represented the 
Lord Jesus in this very function of his grace, and the 
sprinkled water represented the Holy Spirit shed by him 
upon his people, by whom that repentance is wrought, and 
remission conveyed. It was the "purification for sin," the 
symbol of remission. It was thus a visible representation 
to his hearers of the very things which John was com- 
missioned to utter in their ears. 

4. At the time of John's coming, all the thoughts and 
conceptions of Israel on the subjects involved in his min- 
istry, except as perverted by the traditions of the scribes, 
had been molded by the Mosaic ritual respecting the puri- 
fying of the unclean, and by the testimonies of the proph- 
ets, uttered in the language of that ritual. John was sent, 
not to ignore or obliterate the impress thus made by the 
instructions and discipline of fifteen centuries, but to con- 
firm and build upon it, to reiterate and seal the same tes- 
timonies. To this end, no other rite was appropriate or 
congruous, but the old familiar baptism by sprinkling, the 
interpretation of which was so abundant in the prophets, 
and the meaning of which w^as know^n to all Israel. 

5. The baptism administered by the Lord Jesus is never 
known nor alluded to in the Scriptures under any other 
form than that of affusion. It is the antitype of the ritual 
sprinklings of the Old Testament, the fulfillment of all the 
prophecies of the sprinkling of Israel and the nations, the 
outpouring of the Spirit upon them ; and its fulfillment is 
in the New Testament invariably spoken of in the same style. 
To symbolize this, John's baptism must have been by affusion. 



Sec. LVIL] HE SPRINKLED PURE WATER. 245 

6. lu the use of this rite, all the difficulties which em- 
barrass the hypothesis of immersion disappear. As, at 
Siuai, all Israel were baptized at once, so, under John's 
preaching the number to be baptized would involve no 
embarrassment, exposure, or exhaustion. As many as were 
assembled at one time could be baptized in one group, with 
the hyssop bush. Thus, no excessive fatigue was involved; 
no time was consumed in mere manual labor; no dauger 
to the health, nor liability to indecent exposure was in- 
curred. The meaning of the rite was familiar to all, and 
in its use congruity and symmetry were maintained in 
every part and relation of John's ministry. 

The view thus presented is not inconsistent with the 
supposition that many of John's disciples may have received 
the rite while standing in the waters of the Jordan. The 
law requiring the use of running water, the propriety of 
the one river of Palestine as a type of the river of the 
heavenly Canaan, and the necessities of the multitudes 
who waited on his ministry, united in bringing him to the 
river. And the rite would be performed by the baptist 
dipping a hyssop-bush into the stream, and therewith 
sprinkling those who presented themselves around him. 
That, in these circumstances many of the people would 
enter the water is beyond question. The suggestion is to 
be considered in the light of eastern habits and modes of 
dress. The people were clothed in loose garments, with no 
covering to the feet except sandals worn by a few. Coming, 
the most of them, from a distance on the rocky roads of that 
country, — the feet sore and lacerated, and the climate hot,— 
no impulse would have been more natural or more congru- 
ous to custom, than to step into the water, for the sake of 
its refreshing coolness. A curious illustration of this occurs 
in the Phsedrus of Plato. He describes Socrates walking 
in the environs of Athens accompanied by Phsedrus: — 

Socrates. "Here; let us turn aside to the lUyssus, 
and, where you prefer, we can recline in quiet." 



246 yOHN'S BAPTISM. [Part IX. 

Ph^drus. "For the occasion, as it seems, I hapjien 
to be barefoot, while you are always so. Thus it will be 
quite convenient for us, wetting our feet in the shallow 
stream, to walk not without enjoyment, especially at this 
season of the year and of the day."* 

It is altogether supposable that Philip and the eunuch 
stepped thus into the water, as the most convenient way 
of access to it; and it is equally possible that such may 
have been the case with many of John's disciples, and that 
Jesus himself may have been thus baptized. Nor is this 
a mere fancifid conjecture. Among the remains of Chris- 
tian art which have been transmitted to us from the third 
and fourth centuries of our era, there are several represent- 
ations of the baptism of our Savior, some of them in 
bronze bas-relief, and some in Mosaic. In them all, John 
pours water on the head of Jesus. In several, Jesus 
stands in the Jordan, and John from the bank administers 
the rite. In others, both are on dry ground. In no in- 
stance does John appear in the water. At the date of 
these representations, immersion is supposed to have been 
almost universally prevalent in the church. They, there- 
fore, the more forcibly demonstrate the strength and prev- 
alence of the tradition which still survived, representing 
John to have baptized in the Jordan, by affusion. In them 
the idea of immersion is doubly excluded, — by the direct 
representation of the water poured upon the head of Jesus; 
and by the fact that the invariable position of John, out 
of the water, renders immersion physically impossible, as 
administered by him. 

*Platonis Phsed., v. 



Sec. LVIII.] HIS BAPTISM BY JOHN. 247 



Part X. 

CHRIST'S BAPTISMS AND ANOINTING. 

Section LVIII. — The Meaning of his Baptism by John, 

"rpHEN cometli Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto 
JL John, to be baptized of him. But John forbade 
Inm, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee; and com- 
est thou to me? And Jesus answering said unto him, 
Suffer it to be so no\y ; for thus it becometh us to fulfill 
all righteousness. Then he suffered him." — Matt, iii, 13-15. 
Several theories have been advanced, and much discus- 
sion had as to the nature and intent of the baptism of 
Jesus by John. Archbishop Thomson,* supposes it to 
have been, (1.) That the sacrament by -which all were 
hereafter to be admitted into His kingdom might not want 
his example to justify its use. (2.) That John might have 
an assurance that his course as the herald of Christ was 
now completed by his appearance. (3.) Tliat some token 
might be given that he was indeed the anointed of God. 
Dr. Dale thinks that it was a public and official announce- 
ment of his entrance upon the work of fulfilling all right- 
eousness. He strenuously denies that Jesus was baptized 
with the baptism of John. "It is one thing to be bap- 
tized by John and quite another to receive the ' baptism of 
John.' The 'baptism of John' was for sinners, demanding 
' repentance,' ' fruits meet for repentance,' and promising 
* the remission of sins.' But the Lord Jesus Christ was 
not a sinner, could not repent of sin, could not bring forth 
fruit meet for repentance on account of sin, could not 
receive the remission of sin. Therefore, the reception of 
*In Smith's Bib. Diet, article, "Jesus." 



248 THE BAPTISMS OF CHRIST. [Paut X. 

the 'baptism of John' by Jesus is impossible, untrue, and 
absurd." But this baptism v»^as his inauguration into the 
office of fulfilling all righteousness. "No one could share 
in such an inauguration with a fitness comparable with 
that of the great Forerunner. And to this fitness of rela- 
tionship, reference is had in the words — 'Thus it becometli 
us.' 'Thus,', by baptism, 'us,' administered by thee, my 
Forerunner, to me the Coming One proclaimed by thee; 
'now,' entering upon my covenant work, which I now 
declare and am ready to begin, — 'to fulfill all righteous- 
ness.' Can there be, in view of the pei^sons, the time, and 
the circumstances, any other satisfactory interpretation of 
these great words?"* 

According to another theory, it is held that as the con- 
secration of Aaron was by baptism, anointing, and sacrifice, 
so all these were realized in the priestly consecration of 
Jesus. First, He was baptized by John. Then, the heav- 
ens were opened unto Him, and the Spirit of God de- 
scended upon Him, and He was thus "anointed with the 
Holy Ghost and with power." The sacrifice Was not till 
the end of His earthly ministry, wdien he offered up 
Himself 

This latter is perhaps the most commonly received 
theory on the subject. And yet, a more perplexing and 
unsatisfactory exposition could hardly be devised. Accord- 
ing to it Christ's consecration to the priesthood was a con- 
fused imitation of that of Aaron, was partly ritual without 
meaning, and partly real, and took place, part of it in the 
beginning of his public ministry, and part at its close, so 
that until his very death his priesthood was inchoate and 
incomplete. Upon this explanation, the baptism of Jesus 
was a mere unmeaning form, in supposed imitation of some- 
thing in the consecration of Aaron. But Aaron and his 
consecration and priesthood were, in every part and aspect 
of them, figures of the true, — of the realities which are in 

* Dale's Christie Baptism, pp. 27, 29. 



Sec. LVIII.] HIS BAPTISM BY JOHN. 249 

Christ. Aaron's anointing is admitted to have been a 
symbol of the real anointing of the Holy Spirit, shed npou 
Jesus. The sacrifices offered at the consecration of Aaron, 
although by this theory misconceived, are so far correctly 
spoken of as that their fulfillment was had in Christ's one 
offering of himself What then could be meant by Aaron's 
so called baptism, if its antitype is to be found in the 
ritual baptism of the Lord Jesus? One rite representing 
and setting forth another, which is nothing but a defective 
imitation of the first ! 

In fact, the washing of Aaron by Moses was not a 
sacramental baptism at all — a rite, that is, by which bless- 
ings of grace are represented and sealed to the recipient. 
It was as we have already explained a symbolical act set- 
ting forth the endowment of the Lord Jesus by the Father 
with a sinless humanity. 

It is not, however, to this washing of Aaron, that ref- 
erence is usually made by the exponents of this theory. 
It is said that the priests entered upon their official duties 
at thirty years of age, and were then set apart by baptism, 
and that hence Jesus, when " he began to be about thirty 
years of a^e," came to be baptized, and enter upon his 
official work; and reference is made to Num. iv, 3; viii, 7. 
But the places thus referred to are directions respecting 
the Levites, the priest's servants, and not concerning the 
priests at all. Moreover, twenty-five years was the ordi- 
nary age of entrance upon the Levitical service. (Num. 
viii, 24.) The age of thirty seems to have been prescribed 
with reference to the special labor and responsibility inci- 
dent to the carrying of the tabernacle and its furniture 
from place to place, during the sojourn in tlie wilderness. 
(See the whole of Num. iv.) Upon such slender founda- 
tions are theories built. The law set no limitation to the 
ages of the priests. The rabbins say that they could not 
enter on the office until twenty years old. But Aristobulus 
the son of Alexander was high priest when less than sev- 



250 THE BAPTISMS OF CHRIST. [Part X- 

enteen years old/-!^ On the other hand, while the defini- 
tion as to the Levites was, "from thirty years old and 
upward even until fifty years old," — Eli was high priest 
when he died at ninety-eight. (1 Sam. iv, 15.) 

Christ's baptism was not his inauguration to the priest- 
hood. His priesthood was neither Aaronic nor earthly. 
For " if he were on earth, He should not be a priest ; see- 
ing that there are priests that oflTer gifts according to the law; 
who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly 
things." — Heb. viii, 4, 5. If any part of the ceremonial 
of Aaron's investiture was a rule of conformity to Jesus, 
the whole of it was equally so. But he was made a priest, 
*' not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the 
power of an endless life. For he testifieth, Thou art a 
priest forever after the order of Melchisedec." — Heb. vii, 
16, 17. Christ's consecration to the priesthood and exer- 
cise of its functions belong to that " true tabernacle w^hich 
the Lord pitched and not man." — Heb. viii, 2. He was 
not installed by human hands. *' For the law maketh men 
high priests which have infirmity. But the word of the 
oath which was since the law, maketh the Son, who is con- 
secrated forevermore." — Heb. vii, 28. 

Dr. Dale understands the Lord Jesus in the above place 
to mean, — Thus it becomes us, by a united and public act, 
to announce " my entering upon my covenant work which 
I now declare, and am ready to begin, ' to fulfill all right- 
eousness.' " But, in the first place, that was not the time 
of Jesus' entering on the work of fulfilling righteousness. 
Had it been so, it was too late. He was " made of a 
woman, made under the law." — Gal. iv, 4, 5. From the 
hour of his birth, he was fulfilling righteousness, — in the 
obedience of his childhood, as truly as in the sufiEerings of the 
cross. The work on which he entered, after his baptism and 
anointing by the Spirit, was his prophetic office, in which 
he announced and oifered himself to Israel as her promised 

*Josephus' Antiquities, XV, iii, 3. 



Skc. LVIIL] his baptism by JOHN. 251 

King and Savior. So he himself testified in the synagogue 
in Nazareth. (Luke iv, 18-20.) But this office will not 
fit into the above exposition. Moreover, it would seem 
that if any words can express the idea of a thing done as 
a duty of righteousness those of Jesus do so. Dr. Dale 
says, — " It can not be claimed that the Lord Jesus was 
under obligation to undergo this baptism as a part of ' all 
righteousness;* (1) Because there is no righteousness in it; 
(2) Because wdiat there is in it is just what he did not come 
to do. He did not come to repent for sinners, nor to exer- 
cise faith for sinners." The latter argument has the fatal 
fault that it proves too much. Upon the same ground the 
Lord Jesus should not have been circumcised or purified 
with his mother. He should not have kept the passover, 
nor any of the Levitical feasts and ordinances. All these 
implied and required in others a state of heart and mind 
and exercises of repentance and faith which were foreign 
to the holy nature of the Lord Jesus. 

But is it so that there was no righteousness to be ac- 
complished by Jesus in complying wdth John's baptism ? 
The answer depends wholly upon the response to be made 
to the question which Jesus proposed to the Pharisees, — 
"The baptism ot John, was it from heaven; or, of men?" 
If from heaven, it came wdth the sanction of the first 
clause of the Sinai covenant, — '' If ye will obey ;" and was 
entitled to obedience from every soul. John's baptism, — 
Is it necessary to say it? — washed away no sin. Like all 
ritual baptisms, of the Old Testament and the New, alike, 
it aflfected the ritual and outward status, alone, of the party, 
as toward the church, and the ordinances. Moreover, his 
ministry was not addressed to the ungodly only. But, if 
there were any of the people still looking and praying for 
the Consolation of Israel, they, as much as others, were 
called upon, as being defiled by the contact of the unclean 
nation, to receive this baptismal seal of the covenant re- 
newed, and their acceptance in it with God. Pre-eminently 



252 THE BAPTISMS OF CHRIST. [Paut X. 

was it true of the Lord Jesus, that he was defiled by contact 
with the sinful nation. To ritual uucleauuess, he was. as 
liable as any man, and became thereby subject to the same 
obligation of ritual purifying, by which others were bound. 
Jesus, therefore, as a true Israelite, came to John's baptism, 
as being an ordinance of divine authority ; and in his answer 
to John indicates the fact that his omission of the duty 
thus resting on him as " made under the law," would have 
derogated from his perfect righteousness. 

Nor is this all. John was the herald of Jesus in his 
distinctive character as " the Angel of the covenant," — the 
Mediator of that "better covenant" which was enclosed in 
the outward form of that of Sinai. (2 Cor. iii, 8-6.) In 
that better covenant, and Christ as its Surety, all the 
transactions relating to the Sinai covenant had their signi- 
ficance and end ; as they were also the end of John's min- 
istry. The repentance which he preached was a call to 
apostate Israel to return from transgression to the obedi- 
ence required by the covenant, and his baptism was a seal 
to its promises, upon that indispengable condition of obedi- 
ence. In coming to John's baptism, therefore, Jesus for- 
mally and publicly came under the bond of the covenant 
for obedience, and thus presented himself to Israel as her 
Surety therein. The baptism which he received from John 
sealed to him its promises on condition of his obedience, 
and the descending Spirit and the voice from heaven an- 
nounced the Father's approval and acceptance of him as 
Surety for his people, the true Israel of God. It was with 
a view to this ofifice of Christ as the Messenger and Surety 
of the covenant, and to his own relation as the herald of 
Christ in that capacity, that John says, "That he should 
be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing 
with w^ater;" — John i, 31 — that he should be made man- 
ifest to Israel, as her covenant Surety and King ; as the 
Lamb of God and King of Israel. 

The distinction drawn between " the baptism of John" 



Sec . L VI 1 1 . ] H/S BAPTISM B Y JOHN. 253 

and ''baptism hj John," overlooks the profouuder aspects 
of the subject liere indicated. It is true that John's bap- 
tism addressed to sinners a call to repentance, and an- 
nounced remission, on that condition. But this special 
form of its message, is no more than the call to obedience, 
in terms adapted to the particular case of transgressors. 
And the significance and propriety of the baptism depended 
upon its own essential meaning as heretofore unfolded. lu 
the Levitical institutions, the ordinary form of the rite had 
its primary relation, as we have seen, to a ritual unclean- 
ness by contact with the dead, which symbolized the judi- 
cial defilement of the Lord Jesus by contact, through birth 
of a woman, with our dead nature, and his consequent 
death under the curse. The baptism symbolized the resurrec- 
tion of Christ, and of his people with him, in the renewing 
of their souls, and the final quickening and rising of their 
bodies. Both of these are identified by Paul with the res- 
urrection of Christ. (Eph. ii, 5; and i, 19-ii, 10; Eom. 
vi, 2-5; viii, 11, etc.) It is by virtue of union with him, 
by the baptism of his Spirit, bestowed upon and dwelling 
in us, that we are enabled to "know the power of his 
resurrection" (Phil, iii, 10), by our own death to sin and 
life to holiness. This was the signification of John's bap- 
tism. To the Lord Jesus it was a symbol and pledge of 
his own triumph over the exhausted power of the curse, 
in his resurrection ; and of the deliverance of his people, in 
him, from the bondage of sin and death, by his Spirit be- 
stowed and dwelling in them. Through this they receive 
repentance and remission of sins. The same meaning pre- 
cisely was signified and sealed to the people by their be- 
lieving reception of the same rite. 

Thus, on the one hand, Jesus, as being the Son of man, 
one of the family of Israel, was as much bound to come to 
the baptism which, by the authority of God, John dis- 
pensed, as he was to obey or observe any part of the law, 
ritual or moral ; as much as was any true son of Israel. 



254 THE BAPTISMS OF CHRIST. [Part X. 

On the other hand, by coming and receiving that baptism, 
he announced himself, the Surety of the covenant which it 
sealed, and was so certified and accepted by John, by the 
descending Spirit and by the Father's voice. 

Section LIX. — The Anointing of the Lord Jesus. 

The Scriptures inform us of three distinct bestowals of 
the Spirit, upon the Lord Jesus, by the Father. The first, 
was that whereby he was begotten through the Holy Ghost, 
and his humanity so invested with the Spirit's influences, 
as to be born and live in perfect holiness, so that he was 
designated by the angel, "that holy thing." — Luke i, 35. 
The second was the anointing bestowed at the time of his 
baptism by John. And the third was that endowment of the 
Spirit, which was conferred on him, at his ascension to the 
throne. The intimate relation of his anointing to his bap- 
tism by John, and the close analogy which is traceable 
between baptism and anointing, bring the latter within the 
purview of the present inquiry. 

Immediately after his baptism, as he was praying, "the 
heaven Avas opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a 
bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from 
heaven, which said. Thou art my beloved son : in thee I 
am well pleased." — Luke iii, 21, 22. The Baptist adds 
some facts: — "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven 
hke a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him 
not. But he that sent me to baptize with w^ater, the same 
said unto me. Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit de- 
scending and remaining on him the same is he which bap- 
tizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw and bare record 
that this is the Son of God."— John i, 32-34. This 
anointing of the Lord Jesus with the Holy Spirit fulfilled 
a three-fold purpose. 

1. It was a manifestation to Israel of the long-expected 
Messiah, — a confirmation from heaven of John's testimonies 
respecting him, and a designation of him, the coming One, 



Sec. LIX.] HIS ANOINTING. 255 

as being Jesus of Nazareth. From tlie whole account 
given in the first chapter of John, it seems evident that 
the Baptist and his disciples had distinctly in mind the 
language of the second Psalm, which determined the form 
of their conclusions, deduced from the scene at the baptiz- 
ing. '' Why do the heathen rage . . . against the Lord, 
and against his Anointed ? . . . Yet have I set my King 
upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree : the 
Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son ; this day have 
1 begotten thee." The glorious personage here announced 
is, thus designated by three titles, — as the Lord's Anointed, 
his King, and his Son. It was as herald of this King that 
John came preaching, the kingdom of heaven. And when, 
with his own eyes he saw the anointing Spirit descend 
upon Jesus, he identified the Anointed with the Sou. 
He saw and bare record "that this is the Sou of God." 
So, John's disciple Andrew says to his brother Peter, "We 
have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the 
Christ," — the Anointed. Not only so, but, at the same 
time and by the same token, John recognized in Jesus 
" the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the 
world !" Thus fully, by this anointing, was Jesus certified 
to Israel ; and therein the chief intent of John's ministry 
was accomplished. 

2. The anointing was an attestation and seal to him of the 
Father's favor, in view of the spotless righteousness of his 
character as already proved in the life which he had lived, 
as a private i^erson, the carpenter of Nazareth. Of his 
earlier youth, it is said that he "increased in wisdom and 
stature, and in favor with God and man." — Luke ii, 52. 
And now, in the fulness of his manhood, in connection 
with his anointing, a voice from heaven testifies, "This is 
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." — IMatt. iii, 17. 
To this, the Psalmist refers his anointing. "Thy throne, 
O God, is for ever and ever ; the sceptre of thy kingdom 
is a right sceptre. Thou lovcst righteousness and hatest 



256 THE BAPTISMS OF CHRIST. [Part X. 

wickedness : therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee 
with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." — Psa. xlv, 6, 7. 
"The joy of the Lord is your strength" (Xeh. viii, 10), 
said Nehemiah to Israel; and in the joy of his Father's 
favor, testified in the anointing, Jesus fulfilled his ministry 
to the close. 

3. It was his endowment for the prophetic office, as he 
himself testified in the synagogue of Nazareth. "He 
found the place where it was written, the Spirit of the Lord 
is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the 
gospel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the broken- 
hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and the re- 
covering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that 
are bruised. . . . And he began to say unto them. This 
day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." — Luke iv, 18-21. 
From the same source he derived the miraculous powers, 
which attested his word. (Matt, xii, 28.) " God anointed 
Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with pow^r." — 
Acts X, 38. Of the relation of his anointing to the ful- 
fillment of his priestly office, in view of which John called 
him "the Lamb of God," Paul says that he "through 
the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God." — 
Heb. ix, 14. His anointing was not his consecration to 
the priesthood, but his endowment with grace, by which 
he was qualified to perform that priesthood, to prepare and 
offer an unspotted, sufficient and acceptable sacrifice on the 
altar of justice. And, having completed that work, by the 
same Spirit was he raised from the dead. (1 Pet. iii, 18 ; 
Rom. viii, 11.) 

Such and so signal was the meaning and intent of that 
fact from w^hich Jesus derived the name of, the Christ. Its 
close relation in many respects to the doctrine of baptism, is 
apparent. As to the question of mode, a few points may 
here be noted. 

1. In it the Holy Spirit was given to the Lord Jesus, 
as an indwelling fountain of all gifts for his ministry. 



Sec. LX.] '' THAT I AM BAPTIZED WITH." 257 

2. It came by a descent from the opened heavens. 

3. It was in the form of a dove, — beautiful symbol of 
the kindness of God, and the ''meekness and gentleness," 
the "grace and truth" of the Lord Jesus! 

4. It abode on him. 

5. As the result, he was filled with the Holy Spirit 
(Luke iv, 1), brought under his active control and guid- 
ance, and endowed with his extraordinary gifts, for the 
fulfillment of his ministry. 

6. The symbol which by divine appointment represented 
it was the pouring of oil upon the head and person. (Lev. 
viii, 12, 30; 1 Sam. x, 1; xvi, 1, 13; 1 Kings i, 34, 39; 
xix, 16 ; 2 Kings ix, G.) 

Section LX. — " J7t6 Baptism that I am Baptized with." 

It was his resurrection from the dead. We have seen 
that the Mosaic baptism was a symbol and seal of the im- 
parting of life to the dead. We have seen it so referred 
to by Paul in his argument in proof of the resurrection. 
The fact has been pointed out that the Lord Jesus in re- 
ceiving the baptism of John, not only fulfilled the law of 
righteousness as a faithful Israelite, but received, therein, a 
symbol and seal of his own resurrection and triumph over 
death and the curse, under which he was already held. 
Twice, in the course of his ministry as reported by the 
evangelists, did Jesus refer to his resurrection under this 
figure of baptism. Matthew thus records one of these 
occasions, " Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's 
chiklren with her sons, worshipping him. . . . And he 
said unto her. What wilt thou? She saith unto him, 
Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy 
right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom. 
But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. 
Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and 
to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? 
They say unto him. We are able. And he saith unto 



258 THE BAPTISMS OF CHRIST. [Part X. 

them, Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized 
with the baptism that I am baptized with ; but to sit on 
my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give {alX hois 
etoimastai) , save to those for whom it is prepared of my 
Father." — Matt, xx, 20-23. Luke records a similar ex- 
pression. " I am come to send fire on the earth ; and what 
will I if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to 
be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be ac- 
complished ! Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on 
earth? I tell you, nay; but rather division. For from 
henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three 
against two, and two against three. The father shall be 
divided against the son, and the son against the father; 
the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against 
the mother ; the mother in law against her daughter in law, 
and the daughter in law against her mother in law." — Luke 
xii, 49-53. Of these expressions, expositors have proposed 
two interpretations. According to one, the cup and the 
baptism are equivalent figures meaning the sufferings 
and death of the Lord Jesus. Hence, Baptist expositors 
would explain it as an immersion in sorrow; but they do 
not show by what example or argument the word ''bap- 
tism" can be made, thus, of itself, to signify such an 
immersion. A conclusive objection lies against this inter- 
pretation. In both the gospels the distinction between the 
cup and the baptism is carefully preserved, in Christ's original 
question, and in his rejoinder. "Are ye able to drink of 
the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the 
baptism that I am baptized with?" "Ye shall indeed 
drink of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I 
am baptized with." It can not be admitted that a second 
clause, so particular and detailed in statement, and so care- 
fully repeated in the rejoinder, is a mere blank, adding 
nothing to the meaning already expressed. But it is agreed 
that the figure of the cup indicates all that suffering by 
which the Lord Jesus made atonement for our sins. 



Sec.lx.] '' that I am baptized witiv 259 

The other iuterpretation proposed is but a modified 
form of that here given. It discriiiiiiiatcs between the cup 
aud the baptism, by interpreting the hitter of Christ's suf- 
ferings viewed as "consecrating sufferings — sufferings by 
which he was to be separated unto God's service as a royal 
priest." "That the reader may understand how Christ 
could use such language in the sense which we give it, let 
him consider such passages of Scripture as these: 'Unto 
him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own 
blood, and hath made us king^ and priests unto God and 
his Father, to him be glory and dominion forever aud ever, 
Amen.' — Rev. i, 5, 6. 'And Jesus said unto them, verily 
I say unto you, that ye which have followed me, in the 
regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on tJie throne 
of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging 
the twelve tribes of Israel.'"— Matt, xix, 28.* 

The Scriptures cited by this respected author do cer- 
tainly prove that the royalty and priesthood of the saints 
in heaven are the purchase of Christ's blood and the gifts 
of his love. But they do not even hint at the idea, much 
less prove it, in support of which tliey seem to be cited ; 
to v.'it, that the sufferings and deatli of Christ were his 
consecration to the priesthood. On the contrary, they are 
in harmony with all the Scriptures, which testify that those 
sufferings were an offering for our sins, made by a priest 
already consecrated. "For every high priest is ordained 
to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is of necessity that 
this man have somewhat also to offer." — Heb. viii, 3. 
Here, it appears that, inasmuch as he was a priest, he 
must have an offering; the very reverse of the theory that 
his offering was in order to his consecration to the priest- 
hood. This man who by the word of the oath, was con- 
secrated a priest forevermore, needed not, like those priests 
to enter often into the holy place with blood. "For then 
must he often have suffered since the foundation of the 

* Armstrong on the Sacraments, pp. 48, 49. 



260 THE BAPTISMS OF CHRIST. [Part X. 

world/' the original date of his priesthood. "But now 
once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away 
sin by the sacrifice of himself." — Heb. ix, 26. Of Christ's 
sufferings, in their atoning character, the Scriptures are 
full and explicit. And, of them, the cup is the undoubted 
symbol. But of "consecrating sufferings," and especially, 
of such contradistinguished from the others, as here sup- 
posed, we fail to find a trace. Is it asserted that although 
they are the same sufferings, yet are they viewed in a dif- 
ferent light? Still the distinction is without warrant in 
the Scriptures. But, even conceding that point, can it be 
imagined that the Lord Jesus, in the circumstances of the 
case as relating to James and John, would pause upon 
and emphasize that distinction, by separate definitions, re- 
quiring distinct consideration and answer, by them, when 
at last the sufferings in question were one and the same? 
Nothing but an absolute necessity could justify such an 
interpretation. 

In order to a right solution of the question here con- 
sidered, let us ascertain what were the facts and conditions 
necessarily present in the mind of the Lord Jesus, in mak- 
ing his answer to James and John. 

1. Their application immediately followed, and was no 
doubt suggested by a statement made by our Lord, in 
reply to a question from Peter. Upon occasion of the 
sorrowful turning away of the young ruler, Peter said to 
Jesus, "Behold we have forsaken all, and followed thee; 
what shall we have therefore? And Jesus said unto them, 
Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed me, 
in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit in the 
throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, 
judging the twelve tribes of Israel." — Matt, xix, 27, 28. 
Here are several indications of the time of enthrone- 
ment. (1.) It is the time "when the Son of man shall 
sit on the throne of his glory." This phrase, "the throne 
of his glory," is not used in the Scriptures to designate 



Sec. LX.] '' THAT I AM BAPTIZED WITH:' 261 

the invisible tliroue of majesty and power in the heavens, 
now occupied by the Son of man ; but that revelation to 
men of his glory, of which he said to his disciples, " the 
Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father, with 
his angels." — Matt, xvi, 27. To this time he expressly 
refers that throne. ''When the Son of man shall come 
in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then shall 
he sit upon the throne of his glory." — Matt, xxv, 31. So 
Paul declares that the Lord Jesus "shall judge the quick 
and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom f and in 
view of his own finished course, exults in the fact that, 
"Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteous- 
ness, which the Lord the righteous Judge shall give me at 
that day; and not to me only, but uuto all them also that 
love /lis appearing.'' — 2 Tim. iv, 1, 8. (2.) It is the time 
of the judgment. The apostles shall sit with him, judging 
the tribes of Israel. (3.) It is the period of "the regene- 
ration." Some expositors, indeed, refer this word to the 
preceding clause, which they read, " Ye which, in the 
regeneration, have followed me." According to this read- 
ing, the regeneration means, the introduction of the gospel, 
as being the beginning of a new life to the world. But 
others understand, by it, the resurrection of the saints 
which precedes the final judgment of the world. Accord- 
ing to this, which I take to be the true interpretation, the 
resurrection is called the regeneration, because, in it, the 
quickening power of the Holy Spirit, first experienced, in 
the renewing of the souls of believers, and in making their 
bodies his temples, will then take full possession of the 
whole man, quickening and transforming our vile bodies 
into the likeness of Christ's glorious body, and reuniting 
soul and body in glory. In like manner, and at the same 
time, the work of " restitution of all things, which God 
hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since 
the world began" (Acts iii, 21), will be accomplished. 
Beginning, as it does in the spiritual world, in the preaching 



262 THE BAPTISMS OF CHRIST. [Pakt X. 

and triumphs of the gospel, it will be cousuramate iu the 
regeneration of the physical system, iu the new creation, 
the new heavens and the new earth. That the thrones 
promised to the apostles could only be possessed after the 
resurrection, is evident from the fact that, physical death 
being an element of the curse, the blessedness of the saints 
may, indeed, be unspeakable, even in a disembodied state ; 
but there can be no properly royal triumph, so long as 
the bodies are in the bonds of corruption and the grave. 

2. While the time of the kingdom of the saints is thus 
clearly defined, there are also certain conditions precedent, 
revealed with equal clearness and emphasis. "Ye which 
have followed me," says Jesus. Elsewhere he explains 
more fully. '' He that taketh not his cross, and folio weth 
after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life 
shall lose it ; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall 
find it."— Matt, x, 38, 39. The following must be a bear- 
ing of the cross, with the life in the hand. A pertinent 
illustration appears in the life of the apostle Paul. He 
thus states the motives and policy which governed his 
course. — " I have suffered the loss of all things, . . . that 
I may win Christ, and be found in him ; . . . that I may 
know him and the power of his resurrection and the fel- 
lowship of his sufferings, being made conformable imto his 
death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrec- 
tion of the dead."— Phil, iii, 8-11. Paul's meaning in the 
phrase to "know the powder of his resurrection," elsewhere 
appears. He prays for his readers, that they " may 
know," — that is, may realize by a blessed experience, — 
" what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward 
who believe, according to the working of his mighty power 
which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the 
dead and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly 
places. . . . And you hath he quickened who were dead 
in trespasses and sins, . . . together wath Christ, . . . 
and hath raised us up together." — Eph. i, 16-20 ; ii, 1, 5, 6. 



Skc. LX.] *' Til A 7' I AM BAPTIZED WITH." 263 

lu another place, Paul, in view of his finished course 
and assured reward raises the triumphaut shout, — " I have 
fought a good fight ! I have finished my course ! I have 
kept the faith? Henceforth there is laid up for nie a 
crown of righteousness, which tlie Lord the righteous judge, 
shall give me at that day;" — the day, to wit, of "his ap- 
pearing and kingdom." — 2 Tim. iv, 1, 7, 8. 

It thus appears that the time of the kingdom is the res- 
urrection ; — and that the condition of its possession is not 
physical sufteriugs and death, which are common to all 
men; but a conformity to Christ's sufferings and death, 
by being, in him, crucified and dead to the world. With 
this condition is inseparably identified the possession of a 
part in the resurrection and life of Christ. " If we be dead 
with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him." — 
Rom. vi, 8. "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I 
live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." — Gal. ii, 20. We 
can be dead with Christ, dead to sin and the world, only 
by being alive to God. 

Not only is the resurrection of the saints the time of 
their kingdom, but worthiness of part in the resurrection is 
stated with emphasis, as the final and conclusive condition 
precedent to the throne. "They," says Jesus, "which 
shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world and the res- 
urrection of the dead." — Luke xx, 35. "If, by any 
means," says Paul, " I might attain unto the resurrection 
of the dead." Herein is the propriety of the form of the 
question put by Jesus to the two brethren : — " Can ye . . . 
be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with ?" 
That is, " Are ye ready to endure and to do all that will 
be required of those who would be counted worthy of that 
world , and of the resurrection of the dead ?" 

3. The same word (palingenesia) regeneration, which 
Jesus employs, is used by Paul, who describes God's 
mercy as saving us, " by the washing of regeneration, and 
renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us al)un- 



2G4 THE- BAPTISMS OF CHRIST. [Paut X. 

(lantly, through Jesus Christ our Savior." — Titus iii, 5, 6. 
It is the very grace, therefore, of which, under the Old 
Testameut as well as the New, baptism with water was 
the appointed symbol and seal. And particularly was it 
true of the sprinkling of the water of separation, that it 
symbolized the resurrection of the Lord Jesus on the 
third day, and of his people on the seventh, the day of the 
Lord. Add to these considerations the fact that from 
the time of his tour in the region of Csesarea Philippi, 
where he Avas transfigured, Jesus had been earnestly en- 
deavoring to impress on the reluctant minds of the apostles 
the fact that " he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer 
many things of the elders and chief priests, and scribes, 
and be killed and be rahed again the third day.'' — Matt. 
xvi, 2L We have already seen that Jesus and the apos- 
tles distinctly recognized and referred to the third day's 
baptism with the sprinkled water of separation as being a 
prophecy the fulfillment of which required his rising from 
the dead on the third day. "These are the words which 
I spake unto you, while I Avas yet with you, that all things 
must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Hoses, 
and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me. . . . 
Thus it is written and thus it behooved Christ to suflfer, and 
to rise from tJis dead the third day." — Luke xxiv, 44-46. In 
the law of Moses, concerning the water of separation, and 
there only is the third day thus defined-.* 

The points suggested in these considerations are inti- 
mately and inseparably related to the matter involved in 
the petition of James and John. They are constantly so 
treated by the Lord Jesus himself, in his personal teach- 
ings, and by his Spirit in the writers of the New Testa- 
ment. And yet, we are to suppose that, in his response to 
the brethren, Jesus absolutely ignored all this, wdiich he 
had, just before, emphasized in his rej^ly to Peter; and 
that he directed their attention solely to the sufferings 

* See above, p. 100. 



Sec. LX.] '' THAT I AM BAPTIZED WITH." 265 

which he was to endure, and in which they were to share ! 
The alternative is, that on the contrary he referred to bap- 
tism, in the meaning in which unquestionably it was used 
throughout the Old Testament, as a type and figure of the 
resurrection, and thus, by that single word, suggested all 
that was involved in the vastly important considerations 
above mentioned, as connected with the subject. — "Ye 
know not what ye ask. Ye neither appreciate the true 
nature of the honors which ye seek, nor the time and cir- 
cumstances of their enjoyment, nor consider the conditions 
precedent. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall 
drink of, — the cup of the crucifixion of the flesh and 
the world ; and to be baptized with the baptism that I am 
baptized with, doing and enduring all that is involved in 
attaining to the resurrection of the dead ? For it is not 
till the resurrection that the thrones which you seek can 
be possessed ; and only by those who are found worthy of 
that world and of the resurrection." 

That such was the meaning of our Savior would seem 
to be certain. This is confirmed by the words already 
cited from Luke xii, 49-53. "I have a baptism to be 
baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accom- 
plished." The matter present to the mind of Jesus, as the 
occasion of this utterance, was that discrimination which he 
was to exercise and separation which he was to make, in 
purging his floor and dividing between the wheat and the 
chaff*, bringing division into families and dissolving the 
closest and tenderest ties. It is of this that he says, *'I 
am come to send fire on the earth ; and what will I if it 
be already kindled?" That is. Why should I wish to re- 
strain it? "But I have a baptism; . . . and how am I 
straitened !" He thus indicates a straitening of the full 
exercise of that function which he has just described. The 
cause of it is an unaccomplished baptism. What then 
were the facts out of which this language is to be explained ? 
(1.) Christ was under judicial condemnation for us from 

23 



266 THE BAPTISMS CF CHRIST. [Part X. 

liis birth, under the curse and sentence of death. (2.) AVhile 
in that condition, a servant to the law and the curse, he 
could not fully exercise the prerogatives proper to his roy- 
alty. (3.) Especially must his office as personally the 
Baptizer with the Holy Ghost and with fire, — as the dis- 
penser of grace to his people and wrath to his enemies, — 
be in abeyance, till his resurrection and assumption of the 
throne. Thus, he was from the beginning straitened and 
looking forward to his resurrection as the time and means of 
his enlargement. And, hence his saying, — " I have a bap- 
tism." That baptism was the bestowal upon him, by the 
Father, of the Spirit of life, raising him from the dead to 
the throne, whence he now dispenses grace and judgment 
to the world. 



Sec. LXI.] KINGDOM OF THE SON OF MAN. 267 



Part XI. 

CHRIST THE GREAT BAPTIZER. 

Section LXI. — The Kingdom of the Son of Man. 

THE phrases, " the kingdom," " the kingdom of heaven," 
etc., have primary reference to that throne and king- 
dom to which the Lord Jesus was exalted, when he rose 
from the dead, and was set at the Father's right hand. It 
is that miUtant kingdom of the Son of man, the establish- 
ment of which Daniel saw in vision ; the law of which is, 
** conquering and to conquer" (Rev. vi, 2); and the history 
of which is that '* he must reign, till he hath put all ene- 
mies under his feet." — 1 Cor. xv, 25. The phrase is some- 
times used to express the efficiency of Christ's saving 
sceptre in the hearts of believers, as when Jesus says, — 
** The kiugdom of God is within you." — Luke xvii, 21. It 
is applied to the visible church, as being that society which 
by public covenant and profession owns Christ as her King 
and his Word as her supreme law. So, it is used to desig- 
nate the millennial dispensation, when " the Lord shall be 
King over all the earth," when " there shall be one Lord, 
and his nafme one." — Zech. xiv, 9. Its duration is by Paul 
said to be, until " he shall have put down all rule, and all 
authority and power. For he must reign till he hath put 
all enemies under his feet." " Then cometh the end, 
when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even 
the Father."—! Cor. xv, 24-28. Of this end and cliange 
of administration Jesus says, "Then shall the righteous 
shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." — 
Matt, xiii, 43. Of it, he teaches us to pray, — " Thy king- 



268 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Paut XL 

Thus, in all tlie variety of coDnection in which it occurs, 
the phrase in question derives its propriety and significance 
from that dominion with which man was endowed in his crea- 
tion, that royalty which is enjoyed in the throne and sceptre 
of the Son of man, — its authority that of God the Father, — 
its extent the whole universe of God, — its object the manifes- 
tation of the glory of the divine perfections, and the recti- 
fying of the disorders introduced by Satan, — and its end, 
that work accomplished and the sceptre resigned to the 
Father, " that God may be all in all." 

His coronation and kingdom were the consummation of 
triumph for the Seed of the woman; toward which, from 
the beginning, the Spirit of prophecy ever pointed and 
hastened Avith ardent desire. Its realization begun with 
the ascension and the day of Pentecost, — its full meaning 
of grace, of wrath and of glory, will only then be fully 
realized in fruition, in that day when the mighty angel 
shall, with uplifted hand, proclaim the end of the mystery 
with the end of time. Of its significance, I will now 
attempt an indication. 

Sin is, in its very existence, an insult to the holiness 
and sovereignty of God. Its unclean and evil aspect is a 
disgust and abomination in his sight, and a pollution and 
deformity on the fair face of his creation. In its first 
beginning by Satan, it was an immediate assault upon the 
very throne in heaven. Its introduction into the world 
was a Satanic device to mock God's proclaimed purpose of 
favor to man, and to insult His love by rendering its 
object unworthy of His regard, and loathsome to His holi- 
ness. At the creation of man, God had said, "Let us 
make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them 
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl 
of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and 
over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." — 
Gen. i, 26. In the eighth Psalm, this decree is anew re- 
hearsed. (Psa. viii, 4-8.) Again, in the epistle to the 



Skc. lxl] klxgdom of the soy of man, 269 

Hebrews, Paul transcribes it from the Psalmist, and ex- 
pounds it. " For unto the angels liath he not put in sub- 
jection the world to come whereof we speak. But one," 
that is, the Psalmist, " in a certain place testified, saying, 
What is man, that thou art mindful of him, or the Son of 
man that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little 
lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and 
honor, and didst set him over the works of thy hands; 
thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet." — 
Heb. ii, 5-8. From this language of the Psalmist, Paul 
proceeds to argue the extent of the dominion thus given 
to man. He insists, (1) that the decree is unlimited. *'In 
that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing 
that is not put under him ; " (2) that man does not now 
have such dominion. '^Noiv, we see not yet all things put 
under him;" (3) that the decree is already fulfilled in the 
throne which Christ now fills. "But we see Jesus crowned 
with glory and honor ; " (4) that to that same glory the 
Father is now " bringing many sous," the brethren of 
Christ and co-heirs with him of the kingdom. Vs. 10. 

In another place, Paul completes the view, in this di- 
rection. "For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies 
under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is 
death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But 
when he saith. All things are put under him, it is manifest 
that He is excepted which did put all things under him." — 
1 Cor. XV, 25-27. It is a legal and common sense rule of 
interpretation, as to deeds of grant or conveyance, that an 
exception on one point protes tlie intention of the grant 
to be otherwise unlimited. So it is here. The apostle, in 
excepting God the Father from the grant of dominion to 
the Son of man, leaves all else in the universe under his 
subjection. It thus appears that, in the decree of man's 
creation, a dominion was assigned him which in the purpose 
of God comprehended all the power which Jesus, the Sou 
of man, now exercises, over the whole creation of God. 



270 THE GREAT DAPriZER. [Paut XL 

How far this extent of the purpose of God was under- 
stood by Satan, we are not informed. But it is evident 
from the whole tenor of the Scriptures that the fulfilhuent 
of this decree was the subject on which the serpent joined 
issue with God, in the seduction of our first parents, and 
his policy toward our race. The issue thus on trial since 
the foundation of the world is this: Shall God fulfill his 
announced purpose, by exalting man to the promised 
throne? Shall he, thereby, vindicate his own wisdom, sov- 
ereignty, truth, and grace, and reveal and glorify all his 
perfections? Or, shall Satan triumph over God and man, 
thwarting God's decree, through man's ruin and bondage? 
Shall he succeed in the impious attempt to array the very 
attributes of God against each other, so that his justice 
and holiness shall forbid the performance of the purpose 
which his sovereign love determined and his wisdom and 
truth proclaimed? This has been the problem of the ages: 
This, the question which has roused intensest interest in all 
heaven's hosts, "Which things the angels desire to look 
into." — 1 Pet. i, 12. This is the key to the fact, that, 
amid the scenes of human sin and ruin which fill the 
pages of God's word, the doctrine of the kingdom gradu- 
ally dominates amid the gloom, looming up into proportions 
of grandeur which overshadow earth and heaven. "I be- 
held," says Daniel, "till the thrones were cast down, and 
the Ancient of days did sit; whose garment was white as 
snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool; his 
throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning 
fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before 
him ; thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten 
thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. ... I saw 
in the night visions, and behold one like the Son of man 
came with the clouds of heaven and came to the Ancient 
of days, and they brought him near before him. And 
there was given him dominion and glory and a kingdom, 
that all people, nations, and languages should serve him. 



Sec. LXI.] KINGDOM OF THE SON OF MAN. 271 

His domiuion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not 
pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be 
destroyed." — Dan. vii, 9-14. 

At length, the fullness of time drew nigh when the 
mystery of the ages should be disclosed, and the promised 
kingdom given to the Son of man. John came, the herald 
of its advent, crying, "The kingdom of heaven is at 
hand." — ^latt. iii, 2. Soon, Jesus himself went forth ut- 
tering the same announcement, "Kepent, for the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand." — lb. iv, 17, 23. And lest his 
voice should fail to reach every ear, he shortly sent the 
twelve, and then the seventy, to fill the land with the cry. 
"As ye go, preach, saying. The kingdom of heaven is at 
hand." — lb. x, 7; Luke x, 9. 

But before the kingdom could be established, before 
the Son of man might assume the crown, there was a work 
for him to do. That crown might not be a gift of God's 
arbitrary grace — a mere assertion of purpose unchanged. 
It must be a reward of manifest and glorious merit. Nay, 
not even so is it to be a gratuitous endowment; but as a 
trophy won by battle and conquest is it to be received and 
worn. The Seed of the woman — the Son of man — must 
give proof, in presence of all intelligences, both holy and 
apostate, of his worthiness of that favor which God, from 
the beginning, so openly bestowed. He must display the 
mystery of a man walking in the flesh among men, in the 
glory of a spotless and untarnished righteousness, amid 
the reign of abounding sin. He must be seen — this glori- 
ous man — taking upon his mighty shoulders the vast incu- 
bus of the curse, with which Satan's malicious fraud had 
burdened the world, and bearing it away to a land not 
inhabited. He must meet the great enemy himself, whose 
impious challenge has raised the issue of the fitness of 
God's choice, and man's competence to reign — the enemy 
who, in insolent contempt of God's purpose, has chosen 
this earth as the seat of his own empire, and here usurped 



272 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

dominion over man. He must subdue Satan, break his 
scepter and lead him captive in the train of his triumph, 
before he may claim and assume the kingdom and the 
glory. 

Satan saw, with dread the coming of the champion, 
and proposed a compromise. — "Behold the kingdoms of 
the world and their glory! Do homage to me, and all 
shall be thine !" — Matt, iv, 8, 9. It needs not to trace 
the manner of the triumphs of the carpenter's son, ending 
in the resurrection from the guarded sepulcher, and ascen- 
sion to the throne in heaven. As the time of the kingdom 
came to be immediately at hand, he entered Jerusalem, 
amid the exultant Hosannas of his followers, proclaiming 
him the King of Israel. He was betrayed and brought to 
the council. And when the high-priest adjured him whether 
he was the Son of God, his answer, w^hilst attesting that 
blessed fact, held up to equal prominence his ro^^alty as 
the Son of man. — "Thou hast said; nevertheless, I say 
unto you, hereafter shall ye see the 8on of Man, sitting on 
the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of 
heaven." — Matt, xxvi, 63, 64. And so, they crucified 
him, with the accusation written in letters of Hebrew and 
Greek and Latin, — " The King of the Jetvs." 

He had already foretold his apostles that they should 
live to see his kingdom established with power. On the 
morning of his resurrection, he said to Mary, "Touch me 
not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father. But go to 
my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father 
and your Father, and to my God and your God." — John 
XX, 17. The word, " I ascend" (properly, "I am ascend- 
ing"), indicates his immediate ascension and reception of 
the throne, on the very day of the resurrection. And it is 
worthy of notice that John wdio relates this does not men- 
tion that subsequent public ascension which was made in 
the presence of the apostles, as Christ's official witnesses. 
He had already recorded the essential fact. Between these 



Skc. LXIL] CHRIST ENTHRONED BAPTIZE R. 273 

two eveuts, the first and the final ascension, on the occa- 
sion of one of his appearances to his disciples, he expressly 
told them that he was now already in possession of the 
throne. He " came and spake unto them, saying. All 
power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." — Matt, 
xxviii, 17, 18. On the day of Pentecost, Peter testified of 
the supreme authority now vested in Him. "Let all the 
house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that 
same Jesus whom ye crucified, both lord and Christ." — 
Acts ii, 86. Paul more fully states the extent of his do- 
minion. God "raised him from the dead and set him at 
his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all 
principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and 
every name that is named, not only in this world, but also 
in that which is to come ; and hath put all things under 
his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to 
the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that fill- 
eth all in all."— Eph. i, 20-23. 

Section LXH. — Christ is enthroned as the Baptizer. 

The announcement of the coming of the Lord Jesus as 
King was made to the Jews, in a very striking and im- 
pressive manner. Clothed in sackcloth of hair and sub- 
sisting on locusts and wild honey, John came in the wilder- 
ness of Judea, crying to an apostate people, — " Repent ye ; 
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. . . . He that com- 
eth after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not 
worthy to bear. He shall baptize you with the Holy 
Ghost and with fire ; whose fan is in his hand, and he will 
thoroughly purge his floor and gather his wheat into the 
garner, but he will burn up the chaff" with unquenchable 
fire."— Matt, iii, 2-12. The baptizing ofllice of Christ, as 
thus set forth, was the objective point toward which the 
Old Testament baptisms directed the faith and hopes of 
Israel ; and the theme, as we have seen, of some of the 
most exultant strains of prophecy. And to it, the 



274 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

baptism of the Christian church ever looks up and 
testifies. 

The intent of Christ's enthronement is here stated to be 
that he may " thoroughly purge his floor." So Jesus him- 
self explains the parable of the tares. ' ' The Son of Man 
shall send forth his angels, and shall gather out of his 
kingdom all things that offend and them Avhich do iniq- 
uity ; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire." — Matt, 
xiii, 41, 42. The dimensions of his kingdom, to be thus 
purged, we have seen to be coextensive with the universe 
of God; over which Paul declares that "he must reign 
till he hath put all enemies under his feet." — 1 Cor. xv, 
25. The same apostle further states that " it pleased the 
Father that in Him should all fullness dwell ; and having 
made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to rec- 
oncile all things unto himself; by, him, whether they be 
things in earth, or things in heaven." — Col. i, 19, 20. 

In the execution of a work so vast and so momentous, 
the baptist states two means to be employed, — the baptism 
of the Holy Ghost ; and the baptism of fire. By the one, 
Jesus gathers his wheat into the garner ; by the other, he 
will burn up the chaff. We will first consider the baptism 
of the Holy Ghost. 

In the blessed Triune Godhead there is one nature, one 
mind, and purpose, and will ; so that all concur, equally, 
and freely in the eternal origination of the divine plan, and 
in every step of its administrative fulfillment. Yet is there 
an essential and native order of precedence and operation 
clearly traceable in the Scriptures. In this order, the Fa- 
ther is the first, of whom the Son is begotten, and from 
whom the Spirit proceeds. So, in the executive adminis- 
tration of the sacred scheme, there is an order of prece- 
dence in the manifestation of the Godhead, revealed with 
equal clearness. In it, the Son Avas sent by the Father to 
humble himself under the law, in the form of a servant; 
and he so performed the Father's will as to be designated 



Sec. LXII.] CHRIST ENTHRONED BAPTIZER. 275 

by him " my righteous servant." — Isa. liii, 11. In it, the 
Father put the anointing Spirit upon the incarnate Son. 
(Isa. xhi, 1 ; Matt, xii, 18.) And, by the Spirit thus given, 
was he directed in his entire ministry, until he, " through 
the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God," a 
sacrifice for sin. (Heb. ix, 14.) 

But, upon the enthronement of the Lord Jesus as God's 
great Baptizer, there was a change in this order of adminis- 
tration. With the sceptre and kingdom of the Father, the 
dispensing of the Spirit was given to the Son of man. In 
this endowment, two great ends were accomplished. (1.) As 
the third Person of the Godhead is essentially the spiritus, 
or breath, of the Father (2 Sam. xxii, 16 ; Job iv, 9 ; xxxii, 
8; xxxiii, 4; Matt. x,. 20), "which proceedeth from the 
Father" (John xv, 26), so now, being given to the Lord 
Jesus, and mediatorially subject to and sent forth by him, 
as his Spirit, our Savior is thus constituted a likeness and 
revelation of the Father, in that respect also ; as he is, in 
being robed with the Father's glory, sitting on his throne, 
and swaying his sceptre. This was signified by the Lord 
Jesus, when he came to the disciples after his resurrection, 
and breathed on them, saying, " Keceive ye the Holy 
Ghost."— John xx, 22. Thus, "in him dwelleth all the 
fullness of the Godhead bodily."— Col. ii, 9. (2.) This in- 
vestiture with the Spirit, was an essential qualification, 
without which it w^as impossible that the Lord Jesus should 
have fulfilled the work assigned him, of purging the 
Father's floor and gathering the wheat into his garner. 
Among the Persons of the Godhead, it is the office of the 
Spirit to be the author and source of life, by whom only, 
therefore, dead souls are quickened and dead bodies raised 
to life. Hence, Jesus, in announcing his prerogative re- 
specting these things, attributes it to the gift of the Spirit 
of life conferred on him by the Father. "The Son can 
do nothing of himself, but wliat he seeth the Father do : 
for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the 



276 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XL 

Son likewise. . . . For as the Father raiseth up the dead 
and quickeueth them : even so the Son quickeneth whom 
he will. For the Father judge th no man, but hath com- 
mitted all judgment unto the Son; that all men should 
honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. . . . Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming and now is, 
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, 
and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life 
in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in him- 
self; and hath given him authority to execute judgment 
also, because he is the Son of man.'' — John v, 19-27. 

In his last discourse with his disciples, the night of the 
betrayal, Jesus was very explicit on this subject. Fully to 
appreciate his statements on that occasion, it is necessary 
to keep in view the general features of the divine economy 
which were about to culminate in Christ's exaltation. 
Inasmuch as Satan, in his insolent scorn of the human 
race, sought, through its weakness and ruin to cast con- 
tempt upon God, and to involve his government in chaos. 
God in the mystery of his glorious love, saw jBt, in honor 
of the human race, to place his government upon the 
shoulders of the child of that very Avoman whose weakness 
Satan betrayed, and to appoint him to redeem her and her 
seed from the usurper's power, and avenge her wrong upon 
the betrayer's head ; and ordained him , because he is the 
Son of man, to rectify all the evil that Satan has done, — 
to baptize this earth and yonder heavens from the defile- 
ment and dishonor that he has wrought, through sin, and 
to ** reconcile all things to the Father, whether they be 
things in earth or things in heaven." It is manifest that 
in the fulfillment of such a plan, the Son of man must 
take actual possession of the scepter, before full entrance 
can be made upon its manifested execution. It is further 
to be remembered that the entire discourse in question w^as 
addressed to the apostles, with distinct reference to their 
commission and qualification to proclaim the gospel of the 



Sec. LXIL] CHRIST ENTHRONED DAPTIZER. 277 

kingdom. The statements and promises therein contained 
do not, therefore, have immediate respect to the ordinary 
graces of the Spirit, in the hearers of the word, but to his 
comforting, enhghtening and directing influences in the 
apostle-witnesses. 

" I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another 
Comforter that he may abide with you for ever ; even the 
Spirit of truth. . . . These things have I spoken unto you, 
being yet present with you. But the Comforter which is 
the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, 
he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your 
remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. . . . When 
the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from 
the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from 
the Father, he shall testify of me. ... It is expedient for 
you that I go away ; for if I go not away, the Comforter 
will not come unto you ; but if I depart I will send him 
unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the 
world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. Of 
sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, be- 
cause I go to my Father, and ye see me no more ; of 
judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. I 
have many things to say unto you, but ye can not bear 
them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, 
he will guide you into all truth ; for he shall not speak of 
himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, 
and he will show you things to come. He shall glorify 
me ; for he shall receive of mine and shall show it unto 
you. All things tliat the Father hath are mine; therefore 
said I, that he sliall take of mine and shall show it unto 
you."— John xiv, 16, 17, 25, 26; xv, 26; xvi, 7-15. 

In these passages, there is a very remarkable order of 
progress in the statements concerning the mission of the 
Spirit. *' I will pray the Fatlier, and 'he shall give you 
another Comforter." '■'■ The Holy Ghost, whom the Fatlier 
will send in my name." '* The Comforter whom I will send 



278 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XL 

unto you from the Father." "If I go not away, the Com- 
forter will not come unto you : but if I depart / ivill send 
him unto you." As the Spirit essentially proceeds from the 
Father, so, primarily, in the manifestation of the Godhead, 
he is sent forth by the Father, and in all his work of grace 
to man, is sent through the mediation of the Sou. Hence 
the form of the first statement: — " I will pray the Father, 
and he shall give." In the next passage, he indicates that 
whilst, in the concurrence of the Godhead, the Father is 
the primary source of the Spirit, the mission spoken of, is 
in the name, and for the purposes of the Son, namely, — 
to remind the apostles of his words, and interpret them to 
their understandings and hearts. " Whom the Father will 
send in my name," — that is, to do my commission, — to 
utter my words. In the next clause he assumes to him- 
self and asserts the prerogative conferred on him, and 
says, — "When the Comforter is come, whom I will seiid 
unto you from the Father." And since the mission thus 
promised was to be a testimony on his own behalf, he goes 
on to mark that the testimony of the Spirit is that of the 
Father, also, since essentially and eternally, he proceedeth 
from and is the Spirit of the Father, " Even the Spirit 
of truth wdiicli proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify 
of me ; and ye also shall bear witness because ye have 
been with me from the beginning." Compare John v, 36 ; 
Heb. ii, 4. 

Next, since the triumphs of the gospel were reserved 
to honor the scepter of the Son of man, Jesus declares 
that he must ascend to heaven and assume that scepter, 
before the apostles could receive the gifts which would 
qualify them for spreading those triumphs. — "If I go 
not away the Comforter will not come unto you, but, 
if I depart, I will send him unto you." He declares the 
Spirit's offices, toward the w^orld and toward them, w^hom 
he "the Spirit of truth" should "guide into all truth;" 
and emphasizes the fact that in fulfilling these offices, he 



Sec. LXIL] CHRIST ENTHRONED BAPTIZER. 279 



will act strictly as an interpreter. Ciirist is the Word 
of God; and the Spirit sent by him, "shall not speak 
of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he 
speak." — " He shall glorify me ; for he shall take of mine 
and shall shew it unto you." And lest the unlimited pur- 
port of this declaration should not be fully appreciated, he 
adds, "All things that the Father hath are mine; there- 
fore said I that he shall take of mine and shall show it 
unto you." As essentially the Father's, but given to the 
Son ; — such is tlie aspect in which the Spirit shall reveal 
them to the glory of the Son. 

Such were the testimonies with reference to which Je- 
sus, after his resurrection, commanded his apostles to " wait 
for the promise of the Father, which ye have heard of me. 
For John truly baptized with water ; but ye shall be bap- 
tized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." — Acts i, 
4, 5. Of it, on the day of Pentecost, Peter said, "Being 
by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of 
the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed 
forth this which ye now see and hear." — Acts ii, 33. What 
the promise was, Peter, here distinctly indicates. It was 
fulfilled in giving the Holy Spirit to the Lord Jesus, that 
he might of his royal prerogative shed down that Spirit 
upon his people. 

The relation thus existing between the enthroned Me- 
diator and the Holy Spirit, was very remarkably intimated 
by Jesus the night after the resurrection. He came to the 
assembled disciples with the salutation, — " Peace be unto 
you : as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And 
w^hen he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto 
them. Receive ye the Holy Ghost." — John xx, 21, 22. 
Thus by anticipation, he interpreted the gift of Pentecost, 
as an imparting to them of the Holy Spirit, which was now 
given to and dwelt in him, as his Spirit, the breath of 
his life. 

Dr. Dale, in his invaluable treatises has overlooked the 



280 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

distinction here pointed out, between the endowment of the 
Spirit which Jesus enjoyed in tlie performance of his earthly 
ministry, and that which belongs to him as Baptizer on the 
throne. Discussing John i, 33, — which he translates, — 
'* This is he that baptizeth hy the Holy Ghost," he says, 
" He upon whom the Holy Ghost descended and on whom 
he remained, ' without measure' was thus qualified for his 
amazing work, and qualified to be ['o baptizon en Pneumati 
Agio'] the Baptizer who was himself i/i the Holy Ghost, 
and being in the Holy Ghost was thereby invested with 
power to baptize by the Holy Ghost. — The Lord Jesus 
Christ — 'o baptizon en Pneumati Agio, — is ' the Divine bap- 
tizer, being in the Holy Ghost.' . . . The passage is to be 
understood as announcing the peculiar character of the 
Lord Jesus Christ as baptizer. This is done by exhibiting 
him in a two-fold aspect: 1. As being personally en PneiL- 
mati Agio. 2. As a consequence of being en Pneumati 
Agio, being invested with the power of baptizing by the 
Holy Ghost."* — In another place he says, — " The orig- 
inal author of this baptism is the Lord Jesus Christ ; the 
executive Agent is the Holy Ghost ; the giver of the Holy 
Ghost is the Father. . . . Does not the Dative and en 
announce the Agent in whom the power to baptize resides ?"t 

1. The anointing of the Lord Jesus at his baptism did 
not qualify him as Baptizer. Else, neither He nor the 
apostles need have waited ' ' for the promise of the Father," 
which was fulfilled at the ascension, and demonstrated on 
Pentecost. (See Acts i, 4 ; ii, 33.) 

2. As the water is the immediate efficient cause of the 
cleansing, in washing, so the Spirit is the immediate effi- 
cient cause of the grace wrought in the spiritual baptism. 
But to describe him as the executive Agent of that bap- 
tism, is the same error which should represent the water 
in that capacity, in ritual baptism. 

3. Jesus was "in the Spirit," that is under the perva- 

* " Christie Baptism," pp. 53, 56, 57. t Ibid, p. 76. 



Src. lxiil] procession of the spirit. 281 

sive influence and control of the Spirit, during his entire 
earthly life. But it was precisely herein that he filled the 
character of being God's " righteous servant." — Isa. liii, 11. 
It was characteristic of his humiliation, to be thus subor- 
dinate. But upon his exaltation, the order was reversed. 
It is no longer Christ in the Spirit, fulfilling the service 
and work appointed him. But it is the Spirit in Christ, 
subject to his control, speaking his words and doing accord- 
ing to the will of Jesus, the Lord. And Jesus does not 
baptize hy the Holy Ghost doing it for Him, but ^^ with the 
Holy Ghost," as his Spirit and instrument; as he so clearly 
intimated, when he breathed upon his disciples and said, 
" Receive ye the Holy Ghost." 

Section LXIII. — Note, on the Procession of the Holy Spirit. 

In the year 325, the council of Nice condemned the 
heresies of Arius concerning the Son, and formulated the 
orthodox doctrine on the subject in what is known as the 
Nicene creed. In 381, the council of Constantinople, be- 
ing assembled on account of the errors of Macedonius, con- 
cerning the Spirit, inserted into the Nicene creed a state- 
ment of doctrine concerning the Third Person, in which 
occurred the phrase, " which proceedeth from the Father." 
About the year, 434, the council of Ephesus, being the 
third general council, as the before mentioned were the 
first and second, determined that no further addition should 
be made to this creed. Disregarding this decree, and with- 
out the sanction of any general council, the western or Latin 
church, about the end of the sixth century, silently inter- 
polated the formula of Constantinople, so as to make it 
read, — " which proceedeth from the Father and the Son." 
The resulting controversies became one cause of the divis- 
ion between the Latin and Greek churclies. At the ref- 
ormation, the Protestant churches generally, without dis- 
cussion, accepted the Romish doctrine on the subject, and 

incorporated it into their doctrinal formularies. 

24 



282 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

In the foregoing discusssion this theory is ignored, in 
favor of the primitive doctrine ; for the following reasons : 

1. The point in question is the essential and eternal 
procession of the Spirit. If there is one Scripture, referred 
to by any writer, or contained in the sacred volume, which 
even seems to describe %udi procession from the Son, it 
has not been my privilege to meet with it, in the course 
of a careful and long continued inquiry. The texts usually 
cited are, all of them, statements explicitly referring to 
the voluntary and temporal mission of the Spirit, coming 
into the world ; and not to his essential procession, which 
is involuntary and eternal. They are John xv, 26; xvi, 7:' 
Gal. iv, 6. " When the Comforter is come whom I will 
send unto you from the Father." — "If I go not away, the 
Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I depart, I will 
send him unto you." "Because ye are sons, God hath 
sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, 
Abba, Father." Will any one pretend that these passages 
refer to the eternal procession? 

2. The language in which Jesus speaks of this proces- 
sion as being from the Father seems designed to be ade- 
quate and exhaustive. "When the Comforter is come, 
whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the 
Spirit of truth wliidi proceedeth from the Father, he shall 
testify of me." — John xv, 26. That the Father, specifi- 
cally, is the one essential and peculiar source x)f the Spirit, 
is here doubly asserted, by the phrase, " whom I will send 
unto jou from the Father;" and by the further expository 
statement, "which proceedeth from the Father." Should 
James and John unite in writing a book, any one who in 
speaking of James should say that he wrote it, would be 
justly chargeable with carelessness of statement. But if 
the book itself and its authorship and origin are the sub- 
ject of discussion, it could not be said, with any regard to 
truth and accuracy that " This book was written by James." 
And, if the subject of the book were the life of John, and 



Sec. LXIIL] PROCESSION OF THE SPIRIT. 283 

the statement were made that '* This book was written by 
James, and gives the story of John's life," the omission, 
which previously might perhaps be accounted an inadvert- 
ence, assumes a character of falsehood and deceit. This, 
it seems to me, is a just parallel to the case which is made 
by the insertion of the filioque clause, making the proces- 
sion to be from the Father and the Son. In the place in 
question, Jesus is speaking expressly of the Spirit, whom 
he describes with reference to his qualification to be a 
witness, on behalf of the Son. Had the whole thought 
of the passage been concerning the Father, and in describ- 
ing him Jesus had said, "From him proceedeth the Spirit," 
the declaration would seem scarcely reconcilable with a 
coincident procession from the Sou. But when the Spirit, 
himself, and his qualification to be a witness on behalf of 
the Son, is the distinct subject of discourse, — the state- 
ment that ''He proceedeth from the Father, and will tes- 
tify of me," utterly excludes a like procession from the 
Son. This conclusion is strengthened by the remarkable 
language on the same subject, uttered by the Lord Jesus 
upon another occasion. "If I bear v/itness of myself, my 
witness is not true. There is another that beareth witness 
of me, and I know that the witness which he witnesseth 
of me is true. . . . The works which the Father hath given 
me to finish, the same works that I do bear witness of me 
that the Father hath sent me."— John v, 31-36. Peter 
declares that "God anointed Jesus of Nazaretli with the 
Holy Ghost and with power, who went about doing good." — 
Acts X, 38. Jesus here expressly certifies that the testi- 
mony thus by the Spirit given to his ministry was distinct- 
ively the Father's testimony and not that of the Son, — a 
statement wholly irreconcilable with the supposition that the 
Spirit of witness who was the efficient author of those 
miracles proceeded alike from the Son and the Father. 

3. The phrase, — " wliicli proceedeth from the Father," — 
is explanatory of the language immediately preceding. 



284 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

"When the Comforter is come whom I will send unto 
you jrom the Father." But why "from the Father," since 
it is Christ that sends Him? Why not "from the Father 
and the Son?" Jesus gives the reason, — "Which pvceedeth 
from the Father." Either this indicates something peculiar 
and exclusive, or words are without meaning. 

4. There is undoubtedly a voluntary and temporal be- 
stowal of the Spirit by the Father upon the incarnate 
Son, a bestowal in virtue of which, he, as the Spirit of the 
Son, is by the Mediator breathed or shed upon his people. 
But if the doctrine in question is true, the Spirit, proceed- 
ing from the Father and the Son, sustains essentially and 
eternally the very same identical relation to each, and it 
would be just as impossible that he should be given by the 
Father to the -Son, as on the contrary, by the Son to the 
Father. The fact that he is given to the Son shows con- 
clusively that his relation to the Father is not only pri- 
mary, but peculiar, a fact which is the express contra- 
dictory of the theory in question. In fact, by that theory 
the voluntary, temporal, and mediatorial mission of the 
Spirit, by the Son as incarnate, is necessarily and inextri- 
cably confounded with the eternal procession, which is 
essential and involuntary, the Scripture testimony on the 
subject is distorted and set at naught, and the whole sub- 
ject involved in perplexity and confusion. These consid- 
erations, and especially the fact that there is not even a 
plausible pretense of Scriptural authority for the doctrine, 
lead me to its rejection. 

Section LXIV. — The Baptism of Fire. 

Christ's baptizing office is not all of grace. "He shall 
baptize you," says John, "with the Holy Ghost and with 
fire" John thus, in harmony with the Old Testament 
writers, from Moses to Malachi, sets forth two distinct 
functions to be exercised by the coming One; the one, of 
grace, the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and the other, of 



Skc. lxiv.] the baptism of fire. 285 

justice and wrath, the baptism of fire. As this interpre- 
tation of John's hmgiiage is denied, and the two baptisms 
interpreted as signifying essentially one and the same 
thing, it is necessary to consider with some care the evi- 
dence on the subject. 

1. John, as the context shows, is addressing himself in 
terms of earnest admonition to the Pharisees and Sadducees, 
and to the Jews, as infected with their leaven. (Compare 
Matt, iii, 7, and Luke iii, 7.) He warns them of the dis- 
crimination which the Lord Jesus was about to use, in the 
purging of his floor. He begins with the expostulation, 
"O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee 
from the ivrath to comef" He proceeds to indicate that the 
time then current was one of threatening portent. "And 
now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees." The 
safety of the righteous he leaves to silent implication; but 
emphasizes the doom of the wicked, — "Every tree which 
bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into 
the fire." He then modifies the figure, with reference to his 
own baptizing office. " I indeed baptize you with water. . . . 
But he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with 
fire ; " and lest there should be any doubt, as to his mean- 
ing, he completes the sentence with an expository detail, — 
"whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge 
his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he 
will burn up^the chaflf with unquenchable fire." It is cer- 
tainly very improbable that in a Scripture so closely knit 
together and consecutive, so pervaded with one spirit and 
intent, the baptist should have used the word, fire, at the 
beginning and end, as a vivid figure of the judicial wrath 
of Christ, and in the middle, change it, without notice or 
explanation, into a figure of his grace; and this, too, when 
the first and third clauses present every appearance of 
being parallel to, and expository of the second. The sup- 
position that the baptism of fire, means an exercise of 
grace is, in fact, irreconcilable with the purpose of John's 



286 THE GREAT BAPTIZKR. [Part XI. 

whole announcement, and renders the passage contradictory 
to the context, and false to John's mission and Christ's 
office and work. This is the only clause in the connection 
in which John states in direct terms, to the Pharisees and 
Sadducees whom he is addressing, the office of Christ, as to- 
ward them distinctively. And if, while proclaiming in gen- 
eral terms. His judicial and executive functions, consuming 
the evil trees and burning up the chaff, he is to be under- 
stood as saying, — "He shall baptize you with the Holy 
Ghost and with his gracious influences," the only justffiable 
conclusion would be that those self-righteous sectaries were 
the favorites of heaven, and had no reason to fear that 
day that should burn as an oven. 

2. It is a mistake to suppose the figure of fire to be, iu 
the Scriptures, arbitrary and variable in its signffication. 
On the contrary, while constantly resorted to, as a figure 
of speech, and as a symbol, both real and ritual, it stands 
out with a meaning, fixed and invariable, — a meaning 
which springs out of its essential nature and its familiar 
phenomena and effects, and is incorporated in the language 
and institutions of the Word, by express divine sanctions. 
The tw^o most conspicuous phenomena of fire are its con- 
suming power, and the torture which its contact inflicts 
upon sentient beings. Hence, with constant reference to 
the final fiery day, it is everywhere employed as the ap- 
pointed symbol of the divine wrath, arrayed' against sin. 
In this character, it appears in such real symbols as the 
flaming sword of the cherubim, at Eden's gate, — the fire 
of God which w^as rained down upon the cities of the 
plain, thus "set forth for an example, suffering the ven- 
geance of eternal fire" (Jude 7), and the fire in which 
God descended on Mount Sinai. In the same sense was 
the ritual use of fire which continually burned on the 
altars of the Old Testament, from the beginning of man's 
history, to the desolation of Jerusalem. Thus, as con- 
spicuous as WTre the temple, and the altar, and incorpo- 



Skc. LXIV.] THE BAPTISM OF FIRR. 287 

rated iu the very heart of the ritual system, was this 
symbol of God's aveugiug wrath, the fierceness of fire. 
As a figure of speech, it is constantly used to express the 
inflicted wrath of God. And, iu fact, it is never employed 
iu any sense incongruous to this. It is true, that processes 
which are dependent on the use of fire are sometimes 
employed as symbols of the manner in which the divine 
grace is exercised. Says Malachi, — "He is like a refiner's 
fire, and like fuller's soap; and he shall sit as a refiner 
and purifier of silver; and he shall purify the sons of Levi, 
and purge them as gold and silver." — Mai. iii, 2, 3. But, 
even here, the fire is not the Spirit, but the inflictions 
which the Savior employs and which by the Si)irit he 
sanctifies to his people. Of this we have the divine cer- 
tificate. "I have refined thee; but not with silver; I 
have chosen thee in the furnace of aflliction." — Isa. 
xlviii, 10. But, while the figure is thus used, and while 
it is further true, that phenomena of fire, such as light, 
and heat, are used as figures of particular graces, it may 
with confidence be asserted that fire, itself, is never em- 
ployed to represent the Spirit or his fruits. 

3. It is impossible, here to examine all of the multi- 
tude of passages in which the figure occurs. It will be suf- 
ficient to notice those which are most commonly appealed 
to in proof of such us6 as is here denied. On the words 
of John, Dr. Addison Alexander thus remarks: — " With 
fire, — not the fire of divine w^rath, as4n verse 10; but the 
powerful and purifying influences of the Spirit; so de- 
scribed elsewhere. (See Isa. iv, 4 ; Ixiv, 2 ; Jer. v, 14 ; 
Mai. iii, 2; Acts ii, 3.)"* Other writers add Isa. vi, 6; 
Zech. xiii, 9 ; 1 Cor. iii, 13, 15. These are the most per- 
tinent passages referred to, in support of the exegesis given 
by Dr. Alexander. How entirely perfunctory and really 
inapposite these references are, appears in the fact that of 
the places cited by Dr. Alexander two occur in the prophecy 

* Alexander on Matthew. 



288 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Paut XI. 

of Isaiali, aud one in the Acts of the Apostles, on which 
books the church is enriched with commentaries from the 
pen of that distinguished divine ; and that in those com- 
mentaries he, in every instance, ignores and exchides the 
interpretation impHed in his above-cited references. Thus ; 
Isa. iv, 4, — " the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burn- 
ing," he explains as "the judgment and burning of the 
Holy Spirit, with a twofold allusion to the purifying and 
destroying energy of fire ; or rather, to its purifying by de- 
stroying ; purging the whole by the destruction of a part, 
and thereby manifesting the divine justice^ as an active 
principle." In Isa. Ixiv, 2, the figure of the ebullition of 
water, represents the agitation of the ungodly nations in 
the presence of God's justice, delivering and avenging Is- 
rael ; and so it is expounded by Alexander. " O that thou 
wouldst rend the heavens, that thou wouldst come down, 
that the mountains might flow down at thy presence ; as 
when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters 
to boil, to make thy name known to thine adversaries, that 
the nations may tremble at thy presence." In Isa. vi, 6, 
the cherub takes a coal of fire from ofi" the altar, and ap- 
plies it to the lips of the prophet, saying, "Lo! this hath 
touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy 
sin purged." It would seem evident, that, by the coal from 
off" the altar, is meant the atoning merits of the Lord Je- 
sus, of whose sufferings the fire of the altar was the ap- 
pointed symbol. Or, if the language be interpreted of the 
golden altar of incense, the fire of which was kindled from 
the altar of burnt offering, the meaning is the sweet savor 
of Christ's intercession grounded on the merit of his suffer- 
ings. By no legitimate exegesis can it be made to mean, 
the Spirit of God. Jer. v, 14 needs only to be recited. 
" Behold I will make my words in thy mouth, fire, and this 
people, wood ; and it shall devour them." The destruction 
of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and the captivity of the 

* The italics are his own. 



Skc. lxiv.] the baptism of fire. 289 

Land, iu fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy, sufficiently ex- 
pound this language. Remarks already made are sufficient 
as to the next citation : — Zech. xiii, 9. "I will bring the 
third part through the fire and will refine them, as silver' 
is refined, and will try them as gold is tried." With this, 
the interpretation of Mai. iii, 2, is identical. The refer- 
ence to Acts ii, 3, looks to the " cloven tongues like as of 
fire," of the day of Pentecost. But, we shall presently see 
that not burning but brightness, — illumination as of a lamp 
^vas the phenomenon of that day. Says the Psalmist, 
** The entrance of thy word giveth light." The day of Pen- 
tecost was, to the nations, the entrance of God's word, — 
the beginning of the gospel ; and its appropriate symbols 
were tongues of light and voices of praise in many lan- 
guages. As little pertinent is the next passage : 1 Cor. iii, 
13-15. — ''Every man's work shall be made manifest, for 
the day shall declare it; because it [the day], shall be 
revealed by fire ; and the fire shall try every man's work, 
of what sort it is. . . . If any man's work shall be burned, 
he shall suffer loss ; but he himself shall be saved ; yet so 
as by (<Zta, tJirough) fire;" — that is, — "so as passing 
through the fire, with a bare escape." That fire here 
means the judicial and punitive agencies of the last great 
day, in the discovery and punishment of sin, is clear. 

Such are the most pertinent Scriptures to which I find 
reference made, to prove that, by fire, John meant, the 
Holy Spirit, or his gracious influences. That they wholly 
fail to establish the point, is evident; and a further inde- 
pendent examination induces the conviction that no others 
more pertinent are to be found. 

4. A comparison of the four evangelists on the language 
of the baptist strongly confirms the interpretation here 
maintained. Mark and John, in giving account of the 
baptist's preaching, direct attention more particularly to 
the gospel aspect of his mission ; as he was the herald of 
the atoning Lamb of God. Neither of them, therefore, 

25 



290 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

mentions his impressive warnings to the Pharisees and Sad- 
ducees, I'especting the trees cast into the fire and the 
threshing floor purged by burning. And, while they both 
record the testimony of John concerning Jesus, as he that 
should baptize with the Holy Ghost, they are both silent 
as to the baptism of fire. (Mark i, 8 ; John i, 33.) But 
Matthew and Luke enter more into the sterner aspects of 
John's office, as coming in the spirit and power of Elias, 
to announce judgment as well as mercy. They both, there- 
fore, report his words of warning to a generation of vipers, 
words which the others omit. They both tell of the axe 
laid to the roots of the trees, and the threshing floor purged 
with fire ; and both of them interpose between these pas- 
sages the announcement of the two baptisms, "with the 
Holy Ghost, and with fire." The omissions of Mark and 
John, and the harmony of Matthew and Luke show^ that 
the baptism of fire belonged to the judicial and avenging 
aspect of Christ's mission, as emphasized by the latter evan- 
gelists, but only lightly touched by the others. 

5. The inseparable relation of these two functions of 
Christ's office as the enthroned Son of man is certified in 
all the Scriptures. It is prominent in those which had 
immediate relation to the coming of John, and the pur- 
poses of his ministry. We have seen this, as to the first 
announcement made of the Angel of the covenant, to 
Israel at Sinai. On the one hand, he was described as the 
Guide and Deliverer, who should bring them into the 
promised land. On the other, they were warned to "Be- 
ware of him. . . . Provoke him not ; for he will not par- 
don." — Ex. xxiii, 20, 21. In the second Psalm, the terrors of 
the Son are almost exclusively signalized, in warning to the 
rebellious nations. *" Thou shalt break them with a rod of 
iron ; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. 
Be wise now therefore, O ye kings; be instructed, O ye 
judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice 
with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye 



Sec. LXIV.] THE BAPTISM OF FIRE. 291 

perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. 
Blessed are all they that put their trust in him." Especially 
does Malachi emphasize Christ's two contrasted functions. 
A careful examination of the third and fourth chapters 
of that prophecy, particularly the latter, will satisfy the 
intelligent reader that not only do they contain John's 
commission, as the forerunner of Christ, but give the key- 
note and substance of his preaching. He is there an- 
nounced as the Lord's herald, to go before the face of the 
Messenger of the covenant, who ia described as coming to 
execute two opposite but inseparable functions. On the 
one hand, he is to be the refiner and purifier of the sons 
of Levi ; on the other, a swift witness and avenger against 
the wicked. (Mai. iii, 2-5.) Particularly did John have 
in his mind the fourth chapter, the first verses of which 
are thus given in the admirable translation of Dr. T. V. 
Moore. " For beliold ! the day comes! burning like a fur- 
nace! and all the proud, and all the doers of evil are 
chaff"! and tlie day that comes burns them, saith Jehovah 
of hosts, who will not leave them root nor branch. And 
then shall rise on you the sun of righteousness, and heal- 
ing in his wings; and 3"e shall go forth and leap as calves 
of the stall. And ye shall trample down the ungodly ; for 
they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet, in the day 
which I make, saith Jehovah of hosts."* The '* stubble" 
of Malachi and the " chaff"" of John refer to the same thinir. 
The threshing floor was a spot in the field which was 
beaten hard and smooth. The grain was threshed by the 
treading of cattle, or by dragging over it *' a sharp thresh- 
ing instrument with teeth." The process of winnowing with 
the fan separated the grain into one heap, and the broken 
straw or "stubble" and ''chaff"" into 'another. To clear 
the floor, the latter were burned. From this custom was 
deriv^ed the vividness and beauty of the prophet's imagery. 
He represents the wicked as thus separated and consumed, 
* The Prophets of the Restoration, by Rev. T.V. Moore, D. D. 



292 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

aud tlie righteous, like calves let forth from the stalls in 
the brightness of the morning, skipping over the fields 
where the threshing floor lay, and thus treading among 
and trampling under foot the ashes of the wicked. Com- 
pare Kev. vi, 10 ; xi, 18 ; xv, 3, 4. It was with a view to 
the portentous character of the day thus described, that 
Malachi announces the commission of John to preach re- 
pentance to Israel. "Behold I will send you Elijah the 
prophet, before the coming of that great and dreadful day 
of the Lord." From the4)rophecy, which sets forth iu such 
vivid colors, the tremendous issues depending on his minis- 
try, John derived the imagery of his own warning, which 
is, in fact, a running paraphrase of Malachi. 

"Behold," says Malachi, " the day cometh." " It is now 
immediately at hand," says John. "It shall burn as an 
oven," says the prophet, "and all the proud and all that 
do wickedly . . . the day that cometh shall burn them up, 
saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither 
root nor branch." John responds: "The axe is laid at 
the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which bringeth 
not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire." 
Says Malachi, "All the proud and all that do wickedly 
shall be chafiP, and the day that cometh shall burn them 
up." John repeats and develops the figure. " Whose fan 
is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and 
gather his wheat into the garner; but will burn up the 
chafl* with unquenchable fire." 

Thus thoroughly are the thought and language of John 
imbued with the conceptions and imagery of the prophet, 
concerning " that great and dreadful day of the Lord,'' 
the description of which derives all its vividness and terror 
from the manifest and accepted meaning of fire, as an in- 
tense figure of God's consuming wrath. In the presence 
of these facts, the supposition is at once incredible and 
revolting that, into the very midst of the prophet's tre- 
mendous portraiture of that fiery day, with the awe and 



Skc. lxiv.] the baptism of fire. 293 

dread of which he had so successfully striven to fill the 
imaginatioDS aud the hearts of his hearers, — John should 
have injected, abruptly, and without the shadow of ex- 
planation or reason, a phrase, in which the same figure is 
employed in a sense wholly foreign to that in which it is 
used by Malachi, — foreign to its ordinary meaning in the 
Scriptures, and to the whole spirit and tenor of the con- 
nection alike of the prophet, and of the baptist. 

The words of John are, in themselves incapable of being 
forced into coincidence of meaning. " He shall baptize 
you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." Here are two 
distinct aflfirmations connected by the copulative, "and." 
The latter, uttered through the inspiration of the Holy 
Spirit, purports, upon the face of it, to be additional to the 
former. And the more critically it is examined, the more 
thoroughly it will be found to vindicate that character. It 
can not be a mere repetition. It can not be explained as 
interpreting the first clause. AVhat then does it mean, but 
to announce a baptism of fire, in addition to the baptism 
of the Holy Ghost? — a baptism of justice and wrath, ^s 
well as one of renewing and grace? 

Appeal is sometimes made to phraseology employed by 
the Lord Jesus, in his interview with Nicodemus, as being 
similar in construction. — "Except a man be born of water 
and of the Spirit, he can not enter into the kingdom of 
God." — John iii, 5. But the resemblance disappears, upon 
a moment's examination. With Nicodemus, our Savior 
first employs the ritual figure of water, which was or 
should have been familiar to the Jewish ruler. But then, 
to avoid the possibility of mistake on a point so vital, he 
explains himself literally by naming the Holy Spirit, of 
whom water was the symbol. But, in the words of the 
baptist, the Spirit is first named, in literal terms, which 
neither needed explanation, nor could be made clearer by 
it. But the second clause is a supposed explanation of 
that which needs none ; an explanation less intelligible 



294 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

than the words to be explained, — an illustration by a figure, 
used in a sense directly the reverse of its familiar meaning 
in the Scriptures, the meaning in which it is used in the 
same immediate connection, both before and after the clause 
in question, — an illustration, therefore, at once obscure and 
embarras;sing, shedding no ray of light upon the subject, 
but involving it in darkness, and turning to weakness, not 
to say, platitude, the stern energy of the baptist's warning 
cry. "He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, awi 
with his gracious influences." 

Whilst the interpretation in question is without prece- 
dent or authority in the Scriptures, the arguments in its 
behalf are of no appreciable force. First, it is said to be 
*' harsh" to understand the baptism of fire to mean Christ's 
judicial administration as toward the wicked. As I must 
confess myself unable to understand the meaning and force 
of this argument, if argument it be, I leave it without 
note or comment. Another plea assumes the form of 
assertion that "the idea of baptism does- not admit of any 
reference to punishment."* 

It may be allowed that haptizo would not admit of such 
interpretation, if found alone and disconnected from any 
modifying or explanatory word or expression. But, that, 
in such connection and with such modifying words and 
statements as occur in the text of John, it can not be so 
interpreted, is by no means self-evident, and is supported 
by no sufficient or probable argument. The fact has al- 
ready been indicated that the Hellenistic use of the word 
was predicated upon its employment among the Greeks 
to express a condition changed by a pervasive and con- 
trolling influence. It remains to be proved that the Jews 
had entirely forgotten this, which was to them the radical 
meaning of the word; so that, in their vocabulary, it could 
never have been used in that sense. In fact, however, a 
remarkable proof remains to us that the reverse of this is 

-'•Ebrard, in Olsluiusen, on the place. 



Sec. LXIV.] THE BAPTISM OF FIRE. 295 

the truth. Says Isaiah, the prophet, — "My heart panted; 
fearfulness aflrighted me: the uight of ray pleasure hath 
he turned iato tear unto me." — Isa. xxi, 4. Alexander, 
with the later Germans, understands this as a personifica- 
tion of Belshazzar, the king of Babylon, on that night 
when the handwriting on the wall proclaimed his judgment 
and doom. This, however, is unessential to the present 
purpose. Whether the prophet spoke of himself or of 
some other man, the fact of present interest is, that in the 
Septuagint Greek, the phrase, "Fearfulness affrighted me," 
is rendered, '*My iniquity baptizes me." By this language, 
the Jewish translators express the agonies of remorse seiz- 
ing and controlling the speaker, and turning the pleasure 
of the night into fear. Thus he was baptized, by suddeu 
terrors by which he was controlled and brought into a new 
state of anguish and despair. So will the judgment of the 
final day seize upon the ^vicked and control and bring 
them into a like new condition by the baptism of fire. 

Moreover, the connection in which John uses the ex- 
pression in question, is such as to constitute abundant 
ground for the vindication of his language, even though 
baptism were restricted to the sense of purification. The 
purpose of Christ's mission, as set forth by John, was, to 
"thoroughly purge his floor;" by "his floor," meaning, 
primarily the |)eople and land of Israel ; but, in its ulti- 
mate intent, the world and the universe. In order to 
accomplish this object, not only must the wheat be gar- 
nered, but the chaff must be burned. And, as washing 
with water is none the less a purifying, l^ecause it does 
not cleanse or transform the filthiness, itself, but only re- 
moves it, — so, none the less is the baptism of fire a bap- 
tism, because it does not cleanse, but punishes the wicked. 
In so doing, it will purge the race, and cleanse the world, 
which it inhabits. That the baptism with the Holy Ghost 
is a real baptism, and that to it in the strictest and most 
peculiar sense the word belongs, can not be denied.. But 



296 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

in that baptism we see the separatiDg of the righteous and 
the wicked. It is as much the exclusion of the latter as 
it is the reception of the former. If the one is taken, it 
means, separation ; it means that the other is left. Neither 
in conception nor in realization, is it possible to separate 
these two thiugs, nor to eliminate the rejection and punish- 
ment of the wicked from that function by which the 
righteous are called and saved. By both alike, and by the 
one as much as the other, is the commission of the great 
Baptizer fulfilled and his floor purged. 

Not without a significant bearing upon the present 
question is the language in which the Lord Jesus himself 
speaks of the discrimination which he is to exercise and 
the judgments which he is to inflict in the exercise of his 
royal authority. "I am come to send fire on the earth; 
and w^hat will I if it be already kindled? . . . Suppose ye 
that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you. Nay, 
but rather division.*' — Luke xii, 49, 51. That fire, here, 
is no symbol of grace, is manifest; as it is, also, that the 
theme of Malachi and John is the subject of these words 
of Jesus. Nor is the fact to be forgotten that, in the Le- 
vitical system, fire was distinctly recognized, along w^ith 
water, as a purifying element. See Num. xxxi, 10; and 
compare Isa. xlviii, 10, and Mai. iii, 2, 3. 

From all this it is evident that the baptism of fire is 
the exercise by the Lord Jesus of his judicial function, in 
the separation and punishment of the wicked. 

Whilst it may be admitted that no absolute conclusion 
concerning ritual baptism, is to be deduced from the facts 
set forth in the Scriptures, as to the manner of this 
baptism, yet are they not unworthy of consideration as 
one element in the mass of evidence. (1.) The diluvial 
purgation of the world, in the days of Noah, Avas by means 
of rain. " The fountains of the great deep were broken up, 
and the windows Of heaven Avere opened ; and the rain was 
upon ^ the earth forty days and forty nights." — Gen. vii. 



Sec. LXV.] THE BAPTISM OF PENTECOST. 297 

11, 12. (2.) Sodom and Gomorrah suffered a destruction, 
typical in its intent, and "are set forth for an example 
suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." — Jude 7, and 2 Pet. 
ii, 6. Its manner is thus recorded. " Then the Lord rained 
upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from 
the Lord out of heaven." — Gen. xix, 24. (3.) The final 
destruction of the wicked is predicted under the same 
form. " Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and 
brimstone, and a horrible tempest : this shall be the por- 
tion of their cup." — Psa. xi, 6. (4.) More than thirty- 
times the figure of outpouring is used in the Scriptures to 
indicate the infliction of God's wrath. It is a pouring out, 
of wrath, of indignation, of vengeance, of anger and fury. 
Thus, in the Revelation, the seven last plagues are inflicted 
by the outpouring of cups or bowls (phialas) of wrath from 
heaven upon the earth. (Rev. xvi.) (5.) The final de- 
struction of Gog and Magog, is described as being by fire 
which " came down from God out of heaven and devoured 
them." — Rev. xx, 9. 

The analogy of all these facts and expressions with 
those concerning the baptism of the Spirit, as designed to 
indicate the exaltation of the Son of Man, and point to 
his throne as the source of the indignation poured out, is 
apparent. On the other hand, the fact is to be observed, 
that the eternal state of those wicked is represented under 
the figure of dwelling in the lake of fire, — a figure w^hich 
corresponds with the primary classic meaning of bajitlzo, 
in that there is no resurrection. 

Section LXV. — Tlie Baptism of Pentecost. 

Before his crucifixion, Jesus had assured his discij^les 
that they should see the kingdom of God come with power. 
After his resurrection, in visits manifestly preternatural, 
" he was seen of them forty days, speaking of the things 
pertaining to the kingdom of God ; and being assembled 
together with them, he commanded them that they should 



298 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XL 

not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of 
the Father, which saith he, ye have heard of me. For 
John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized 
with the Holy Ghost, not many days hence." — Acts i, 3, 4. 
He moreover told them, "Ye shall receive power, after 
that the Holy Ghost is come upon you ; and ye shall be 
witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, 
and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the 
earth." — lb. 8. For ten days after his public ascension 
they awaited the promised baptism. "And when the day 
of Pentecost was fully come, they w^ere all with one accord 
in one place. And suddenly there came a souud from 
heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the 
house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto 
them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it sat upon each 
of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, 
and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave 
them utterance." — rActs i, 1-4. They were inspired with 
divine courage, zeal, aud power, and in presence of those 
who had cried, "Away with him!" and of the rulers, who 
had condemned him to the cross, proclaimed the kingdom 
and glory of the man of Nazareth. And, on that day, 
three thousand, a few days afterward, five thousand, and 
daily multitudes of believers added to the church, were 
the trophies of the power of Christ's baptizing scepter, — the 
firstfruits and pledge of the baptism of his Spirit which 
still continues to pour from on high its floods of salvation 
upon the world. 

Such was our Savior's entrance on his office, as the 
royal Baptizer, — such the first administration of his bap- 
tism of grace. There are four things concerning it which 
demand attention. These are, — the manner in which the 
baptifem was dispensed, — the new spirit then given to the 
church, — the accompanying signs, — and, the baptism of 
repentance, which then and thenceforth accompanied the 
preaching of' the gospel. 



Sec. LXVI.] THE MANNER OF PENTECOST. 299 

Section LXVI. — The Manner of the Pentecost Baptism. 

In all the expressioDS and statements concerning the 
baptism of Pentecost, there is a prominence given to the 
manner of it which can not be casual, nor devoid of special 
significance. The attendant phenomena are described as 
"a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind," 
which "filled all the place where they were sitting." 
*' Cloven tongues, like as of fire, sat upon each of them." 
**And they were n\\ filled with the Holy Ghost." The facts 
are by Peter described as a fulfillment of the prophecy, — 
"J will pour out of my Spirit iqwn all flesh." — vs. 17. He 
further tells the assembly, that Jesus " shedfoHh this which 
ye now see and hear." — vs. 33. Of the similar scene in the 
house of Cornelius, it is stated that " the Holy Ghost fell 
on all them which heard the word," and that "o;i the Gen- 
tiles was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost." — Acts x, 
44, 45. Peter also, in giving account of this scene to the 
church at Jerusalem, stated, with reference to these facts, 
that as he began to speak, " the Holy Ghost fell on them, 
as on us at the beginning. Then remembered I the word 
of the Lord, how he said, . . . Ye shall be baptized with 
the Holy Ghost."— Acts xi, 15, 16. 

After the same conception is the language of Paul. — 
"According to his mercy he saj'ed us, by the washing of 
regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he 
shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior." — 
Tit. iii, 5, 6. " Hope maketh not ashamed, because the 
love of God (eJckechutai en) is poured out on our hearts (dia) 
through the Holy Ghost given us." — Rom. v, 5. In these 
places, the words, " shed," and, "poured," which are in- 
terchangeably used in the translation, represent one in the 
original. 

The first point, here, is the manner in which the phe- 
nomena of the occasion were introduced. " Suddenly there 
came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, 



800 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

and it filled all the house where they were sitting." That 
this was designed to be a significant sign, would seem certain 
in the presence of all the other significant features of the oc- 
casion. And its meaning is not obscure. From the Greek 
verb, p?ieo, to blow, are derived two nouns, pneuma and 
pnoe. These words are nearly identical in meaning, except 
that pneuma is by the sacred writers appropriated to desig- 
nate the Holy Spirit. It, and the Hebrew ruagh, which 
is appropriated in a like manner, both mean, primarily, 
the air, the wind; and hence, the breath, the soul of man, 
a spirit, the Spirit of God. In all these significations, 
they are found, the one in the Hebrew Scriptures of the 
Old Testament, and the other in the Greek of the Septua- 
gint version. We have seen how largely the figure of water 
is used as a symbol of the Spirit. Its chief propriety as 
thus employed appears in its effects upon the earth and the 
creatures, penetrating and fertilizing the soil, washing away 
defilement, and refreshing the thirsty ; w^hile as rain from 
heaven, it traces the descent of the Spirit from the throne 
of God. In wind, or air in motion, or the breath, we have 
another symbol, familiar in the Scriptures, and equally in- 
teresting and significant. Its peculiar fitness consists in its 
relation to its source, as representing the Third Person as 
the Spiritus or breath, ''which proceedeth from the Fa- 
ther ;" and in its nature, as essential to sustain life in the 
animate creation. Says the Psalmist, " By the Word of the 
Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by 
the breath (to pneumati, by the Spirit) of his mouth." — '■ 
Ps. xxxiii, 6. The word, pnoe, is that Avhich designates 
the "rushing, mighty ivind" of Pentecost. It is used in 
the Septuagint in the sense of wind, stormy or violent wind, 
the breath, the soul, the spirit. Its relation to pneuma 
may be seen in such places as follow. — " He that giveth 
hreatli (pnoe) to the people upon it and spirit (pneuma) to 
them that w^alk therein." — Isa. xlii, 5. "The spirit 
(pneuma) should fail before me, and the souls (pnoen) 



Sec. LXVL] THE MANNER OF PENTECOST. 301 

which I have made." — Ibid. Ivii, 16. " At the hlmi (pnoes) 
of the breath {piieumatos) of His nostrils." — 2 Sam. xxii, 16. 
** All the time my breath (^pnoes) is in me, and the Spirit 
(pneuma) of God is in my. nostrils." — Job xxvii, 3. " The 
Spirit (pneuma) of God hath made me, and the breath 
{pnoe) of the Almighty hath given me life." — Job. xxxiii, 
4. In the New Testament, we have the words of Jesus to 
Nicodemus, — "The wind bloweth {pneuma pnei, the Spirit 
breatheth), where it listeth." — John iii, 8. And in this 
same book of the Acts, is the testimony of Paul to the Athe- 
nians that — " He giveth to all, life and breath (pnoen), and 
all things." — Acts xvii, 25. Significant to the same pur- 
pose is the word, theo-pneustos {God breathed), which de- 
scribes the Scriptures as the dictate of the Spirit in the 
prophets. (2 Tim. iii, 16.) Turning now to another 
word, — says Dr. Alexander, "The word (pheromene) trans- 
lated rushing, is a passive participle, meaning borne, or 
carried, and is properly descriptive of involuntary motion, 
caused by a superior power ; an idea not suggested by the 
active participles, rushing, driving, or the like ; .which seem 
to make the wind itself the operative agent."* Compare 1 
Peter i, 13, — "The grace that is to be brought (pheromenen) 
unto you;" and 2 Peter i, 21. — " Holy men spake as they 
(plieromenoi) were moved by the Holy Ghost." With these 
notes, let us compare that action of Jesus, in which he 
breathed on his disciples, and said to them, " Receive ye the 
Holy Ghost." — John xx, 22. This we must understand as 
designed by him for an interpretation of Pentecost. It can 
mean nothing else. For not till then was the Spirit to be 
given. 

The same figure is fully developed in the prophecy of 
Ezekiel (xxxvii, 1-14), of the valley of dry bones. "There 
were very many in the open valley ; and lo, they were very 
dry." At the divine command, Ezekiel prophesied to 
them, — "O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 

* Alexander on the Acts, in loco. 



302 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XL 

Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones, Behold, I -will 
cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live. . . . 
And as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a 
shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. 
And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up 
upon them, and the skin covered them above; but there 
was no breath in them. Then said he unto me. Prophesy 
unto the wind. . . . Come from the four winds, O breath, 
and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I 
prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came 
into them and they stood up upon their feet, an exceeding 
great army." The vision is interpreted to the prophet. 
" These bones are the whole house of Israel. . . . Thus 
saith the Lord God ; Behold, O my people, I will open 
your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, 
and bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know 
that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O 
my people, and brought you up out of your graves, and 
shall put my Spirit in you and ye shall live." Ezek. 
xxxvii, 1-14. Throughout this passage, the words, 
"wind," "breath" and "Spirit," are in the original the 
same (Hebrew, rudgli, Greek, pieiima), and the word, 
"breathe," — "Come from the four winds, O breath, and 
breathe upon these slain," — is the same that describes the 
action of the Lord Jesus, just referred to. If now, in the 
light of these illustrations, we return to the account of 
the Pentecostal scene, we read that "suddenly there came 
a sound from heaven as of an outbreathed, mighty breath, 
and it filled all the house where they were sitting. . . . 
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit." Thus was 
signified the Spirit of Christ, as the breath of His life, by 
Him breathed into His disciples. So distinctly and pro- 
foundly was this idea impressed on the mind of the primi- 
tive church, that it became the occasion of one of the un- 
warranted forms which were at an early age added to the 
Scriptural rite of baptism. After the interrogation and im- 



Sec. LXVI.] THE MANNER OF PENTECOST. 303 

mediately before the baptism, there was an exorcism, with 
an insufflation or breathing in the face of the person bap- 
tized ; which Augustine calls a most ancient tradition of 
the church.* It was meant to signify the expelling of 
the evil spirit, and the breathing m of the good Spirit 
of God. 

In the outbreathing of Pentecost we have the only 
phenomenon of the day, that was expressive of the actual 
performance of the baptism by the Lord Jesus. It was 
the specific symbol of the manner of it. Comparing it with 
the various other statements above quoted, it appears that 
of that baptism , the element was the Spirit of life in Christ 
Jesus ; the administrator was Jesus seated on the throne of 
glory ; the manner of it was an outbreathing from him ; its 
coming was by descent, — a shedding down from the height 
of his throne to his disciples in Jerusalem ; in its reception, 
it was a falling upon them ; and the result was that they 
were all filled with the Holy Spirit, as the breath of their 
lives. For, in the symbol as described, they were sur- 
rounded as it were with an atmosphere of the Spirit. " It 
filled all the house where they were sitting ;" so that they 
could breathe no other breath. 

In this account, the chief interest centers on the source 
of the outpouring. And, in fact, the very purpose of the 
forms of expression used and of the sensible phenomena 
which they describe was to direct the attention of all, up- 
ward to that source. To the same effect, was the whole 
argument of Peter's discourse to the multitude. Each po- 
sition in it, has this as the end. — " Ye men of Israel, Jesus 
of Nazareth ye know, for him ye crucified. Him God 
raised from the dead and exalted to his own right hand, 
and gave the Spirit in all fullness to him. That Spirit 
hath he shed down upon us, as ye now see and hear, and 
thus is shown his exaltation and power. Therefore let all 
the house of Israel know, assuredly, that God hath made 

* Augustinus de Nupt. et Concup. IT, 29. 



304 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

that same Jesus whom ye crucified both Lord and Christ, — 
both sovereign over all and that Anointed One who was 
promised to David, and heralded by all the prophets, as 
he that should sit on David's conquering throne." 

We have seen how Paul labors to exalt our imagina- 
tions to some proportionate conceptions of the unapproach- 
able height of the throne of Christ's glory. And now, in 
our times, from the day of Pentecost unto the end, it is 
signalized in the exercise by him of that highest preroga- 
tive of God, the sending forth of the infinit-e Spirit. It is 
shed down by him from yonder height to this low earth, — 
down to us worms in the abyss Avhere we lay, strown in 
the upas valley of death, to breathe life into the dead and 
give salvation to the lost. And to signalize that height 
of his exaltation, the depth of his condescension, and the 
measureless immensity of his matchless love, the Baptism 
of Pentecost was given, its miracles were wrought, and its 
myriad trophies of salvation gathered. All these point 
upward and cry, — "Behold! on high! Far above all 
powers and dominions, Jesus fills the throne ! Thence he 
breathes forth the Spirit of God! Thence he sheds down 
salvation !" 

Section LXVII. — T]ie New Spirit Imjmrted on Pentecost. 

The previous announcements which heralded the bap- 
tism of Pentecost, and all the attendant facts and state- 
ments unite to indicate that in the very nature of the gift 
then conferred there was something essentially new and 
different from any previous endowments bestowed on the 
church, — something by which peculiar honor was reflected 
on the baptizing office of the Lord Jesus, upon this its 
first assumption and exercise. It is a question to be con- 
sidered, — What were the new characteristics of grace now 
first imparted to the church? 

The Holy Spirit was no novelty, now first bestowed. 
At the coming of Christ, the Jews were familiar with the 



Skc. LXVIL] THE NEW SPIRIT IMPARTED. 305 

doctrine of the personality and offices of the Third Person 
of the Godhead. Of this the evidence is conchisive,— in 
the story of John's birth, — in the theme and style of John's 
preaching, — in the facts stated as to the birth, anointing, 
and ministry of Christ, — in His manner of reference to 
the subject in his teaching, — and especially in his warning 
as to the sin against the Holy Ghost, which is only expli- 
cable upon the supposition that the doctrine of the Spirit 
was familiar to the Jews. The knowledge thus evinced 
had its source in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. 
So full are they on the subject that there is scarcely an 
aspect in which it appears in the New Testament which 
has not its counterpart in the Old. In them his agency 
is distinctly and fully recognized, both in the inspiration 
of the prophets, and in the gifts and graces which have 
been common to God's people in all ages. See for exam- 
ple, Psa. li, 11-13; cxliii, 10; Isa. Ixiii, 10, etc. The 
graces which Paul testifies to be the fruits of the Spirit 
(Gal. V, 22; Eph. v, 9), and which are in the above cited 
places, by the Old Testament writers referred to the same 
source, were abundantly displayed in the saints of the 
former dispensation, insomuch that Paul holds them up as 
ensamples to us. (Heb. xi and xii, 1.) The Psalms, 
which gave expression and nourishment to their graces, 
are never exhausted by the profoundest attainments of 
Christian experience. And with all the lamentable facts 
of unfaithfulness and apostasy which darken the pages of 
Israel's history, there were periods of fidelity, in which the 
church shone in the beauty of holiness, fair and comely in 
the eyes of God. In fact, with all the disposition which 
we sometimes realize to dwell on the unbelief and aposta- 
sies of the twelve tribes, and lamentable as they were, it 
is certain that the New Testament church is in no condi- 
tion to boast herself against Israel. If we survey the 
nominally Christian church, in its various sections — the 

communions of Rome and of the east, and of the various 

2G 



306 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

Protestant churches in Europe and America — a just judg- 
ment will pronounce them, on the whole, scarcely less un- 
faithful and surely more inexcusable than was Israel. 
Assuredly, there is no such difference in our favor as to 
indicate the absence of the Spirit from the latter, and his 
peculiar presence with the former. 

In what then did the peculiarity of the day of Pente- 
cost consist? To this question, Peter in bis discourse on 
the occasion, gave an explicit answer. " This is that which 
is spoken by the prophet Joel: — And it shall come to pass, 
in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit 
upon all flesh." — Acts ii, 16, 17, In this citation of proph- 
ecy, and in the discourse which followed, Peter defined the 
peculiarities of the occasion as consisting in three things: 
First, that the outpouring of that day was made by the 
Lord Jesus in person. Second, that the miraculous phe- 
nomena attending it were designed to attest the fact that 
He, being risen from the dead and exalted to God's 
right hand, was endowed with supreme and universal au- 
thority. Third, that the gifts of salvation by him dis- 
pensed were adapted and designed not for Israel only but 
for "all flesh," — for the world. Thus was implied a change 
in the whole aspect of grace, in the hearts of God's 
people. 

We have formerly seen that God's entrance into cov- 
enant with Israel, at Sinai, implied a temporary with- 
drawal of his overtures from the nations, — " suffering them 
to walk in their own ways," (Acts xiv, 16), but with a distinct 
assertion of a reserved right, inserted in the covenant 
itself, — "For, all the earth is mine." So long as God 
"winked at" the wickedness of the Gentiles, the church 
had neither commission nor call to labor for their salvation, 
nor impulse of grace to look for it. The doors of salva- 
tion and of the church were held open to all, and the 
word and ordinances maintained in Zion were an invitation 
to the world to enter freely. But, beyond that Israel was 



Sec. LXVIL] THE NEW SPIRIT IMPARTED, 307 

not called to go. On the contrary, she was discouraged 
from all active or intimate contact or int(y^course with the 
apostate nations. Her primary and paramount office and 
obligation it was to keep her own self pure, and to preserve 
and transmit the oracles and ordinances of God fliithfuUy, 
until the time of the Messiah. In the meantime, since the 
operations and graces of the Spirit can not but be in harmony 
with the will and purpose of God, his influences in the hearts 
of Israel, corresponded with the purpose thus indicated 
concerning the nations. For, grace is nothing but harmony 
of affections and will with the character and will of God. 
Grace, in Israel, was therefore without disseminating zeal 
or power, as toward the Gentiles. It contained no im- 
pulse to seek their salvation. But, knowing them as apos- 
tate and enemies to God and to his people, and as the 
objects of his indignation and wrath, it concurred in that 
indignation, and at times gave expression to it, in forms 
which offend a shallow and unsanctified criticism. Yet are 
they no more incongruous to the active enjoyment and ex- 
ercise of the profoundest and most abundant measure of 
the Spirit's graces, than is the absence in heaven's blest 
inhabitants of zeal for the welfare of Satan, and their 
adoring approval of God's justice in his doom. All this was 
rather confirmed than modified by the fact that the Spirit 
of prophecy constantly indicated that a day was coming 
when all the ends of tlie earth should see and share in the 
salvation of God. The more distinctly it was revealed as 
the purpose of God for the future, the more clearly was it 
seen to be not of the present. 

But, now, the time had come. The Son of man, the 
Prince Messiah, to whom was reserved the ingathering of the 
Gentiles (Gen. xlix, 10), had assumed the scepter and re- 
ceived the Spirit of life for the nations. The sanctifying 
grace of that Spirit must be essentially the same in all 
ages and times. But there was now a change in its aspect 
to the Gentiles, coincident with the change of the divine 



308 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

attitude toward them. Instead of the old passive sentiment 
concerning the world's ruin, — instead of the former ardor 
of indignation against its ungodliness, — the apostles and 
the church were now inspired with a divine pity and benefi- 
cent love, — with an active and aggressive zeal for the con- 
version of men. While the enclosed water of the laver at 
the tabernacle was the symbol of the Spirit's influences, 
under the former dispensation, the increasing river of 
Ezekiel's vision is their representative in the New Testa- 
ment times. Flowing forth out of Zion, with a widening 
and deepening current, it pours its living waters into the 
dead sea of our apostate humanity, to the healing of the 
waters. This difference in the nature of the Spirit's in- 
fluences, now, and of old, is beautifully exhibited in two 
figures employed by our Savior, the distinctive features of 
which should not be overlooked because of the points of 
analogy. Speaking to the woman of Samaria of the per- 
sonal blessings which the Spirit bestows, he tells her, — 
" AVhosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him 
shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him 
shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlast- 
ing life." — John iv, 14. A well, within ; living, active, 
but confined. But, at Jerusalem, at the festival of the 
pouring of water, which anticipated the giving of salvation 
to the Gentiles, — "In the last day, that great day of the 
feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying. If any man thirst, let 
him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, 
as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow 
rivers of living water." — John vii, 37, 38. ''Out of his 
belly shall /oio." Here is grace, not enclosed and restricted 
in its sphere, but outflowing and aggressive, disseminating 
itself witliout stint or limit. Hence the explanation which 
the evangelist adds: — "This spake he of the Spirit which 
they that believe on him should receive ; for the Holy 
Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet 
glorified." — lb. vs. 39. Hence, also, the selection made by 



Sec. LX VII.] THE NEW SPIRIT IMPARTED. 309 

Peter, in explanation of the Pentecostal scene. Among the 
prophecies, there are many in which the outpouring of the 
Spirit is spoken of But of them all the apostle selected 
that "which, in the briefest and completest manner, indi- 
cates the breaking down of the wall of partition. "I will 
pour out of my Spirit wpon all flesh." This he afterward 
explains. "For the j)romise is unto you, and to your 
children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the 
Lord our God shall call." — vs. 39. 

But there was another point, equally important, in the 
endowments bestowed on that memorable day. Heretofore, 
not only had commission to the Gentiles been withheld 
from the church, but gratuitous labors by her in that be- 
half would have been necessarily futile, for lack of power 
accompanying the word. But, said Jesus to the apostles, 
''Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come 
upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in 
Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the 
uttermost part of the earth." — Acts i, 8. What was the 
nature of the power thus given, Paul tells the church of 
Corinth. "God who commanded the light to shine out of 
darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the 
knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ. 
But w^e have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the 
excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." — 
"And ray speech and my preaching were not with enticing 
words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit 
and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wis- 
dom of men, but in the power of God." — 2 Cor. iv, 6, 7; 
1 Cor. ii, 4, 5. This illuminating, convincing, and convert- 
ing power of the Spirit of God attending the word, remains 
the perpetual endowment and authentication of the Chris- 
tian ministry. In addition to the zeal and power thus 
conferred, the apostles were by this baptism invested with 
those gifts of courage, wisdom, inspiration, and miracles, 
which had been promised by the Savior, and were requisite 



310 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Paiit XL 

to qualify tliem for their special office aud to attest their 
ministry. (Mark xvi, 17, 18; Luke xxi, 15-19; John 
xiv, 26; xvi, 13-15.) 

Such was the change wrought by the baptism of Pen- 
tecost ; such the new gifts by it conferred. With the 
coming of God's set time of mercy to the world, it awa- 
kened in the hearts of his people a zeal for souls of every 
class and nation. And it imparted to the word of the 
gospel a demonstration and power of converting grace, 
correspondent to the breadth of the new commission, and 
to the saving purposes of our blessed God, toward an 
apostate race. In proportion as we, in these latter days, 
have part in the baptism and Spirit of Pentecost, will we 
share in the same ardor of zeal for the spread of the gos- 
pel and the conquest of the nations to the banner of Christ. 

Section LX VIII. — The, Tongues like as of Fire. 

Jesus had foretold his disciples that miraculous signs 
and wonders should accompany and attest the word of the 
gospel published by them (Mark xvi, 17, 18), and the sub- 
sequent history gives abundant illustration of the fulfillment 
of this pro^mise, in the healing of the sick, raising the dead 
and other miracles of power. But the only signs mentioned 
on the day of Pentecost are the "rushing mighty wind," 
the "cloven tongues like as of fire," and the gift of "other 
tongues." The first of these has been already considered. 
We will now inquire into the "tongues like as of fire." 
"There appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of 
fire; and it sat upon each of them." Says Alexander, 
^'Cloven should rather be, distrihnted, so that one sat on each 
of them. (Vulg. linguce dispertitce.) The common version, 
which implies that each tongue was divided into two or more, 
is at variance with the usage of the Greek verb (diameri- 
zomenai), which sometimes denotes moral separation or 
estrangement (Luke xi^ 17, 18; xii, 52, 53), but never, 
physical division. Its usual sense of distribution, or allot- 



Sec. LXVIII.] THE TONGUES AS OF FIRE. 311 

ment, may be seen by a comparison of Matt, xxvii, 35; 
Mark xv, 24; Luke xxii, 17; xxiii, 34; aod Acts ii, 45."* 
"There appeared unto them distributed tongues like as of 
fire, and one sat on each of them." Such is the literal 
meaning of the " evangelist. These tongues " a/:>peared," 
"/i/ce OS of fire." Not burning, but brightness or illumina- 
tion was their characteristic. Tj:iey had thus the appear- 
ance of burning lamps, and seem evidently to have been 
symbols of that divine illumination which through the 
ministry of the gospel was about to be given to the Gen- 
tiles. In the tabernacle and temple stood the seven 
branched golden candlestick, with its seven lamps, which 
were by the priests daily replenished with oil, and kept 
burning continually. In the opening of the vision of the 
Apocalypse, John saw seven golden candlesticks, or lamp- 
stands, in the midst of which was one like the Son of man, 
in whose right hand were seven stars. These stars were 
the burning lamps of the lamj^stands. (Compare Rev. i, 
12, 13, 16, 20; iii, 1; and iv, 5.) They were explained to 
him. The candlesticks were the seven churches of Asia, 
and the stars were the angels of the seven churches. 
There has been some question among expositors, as to the 
form of church government contemplated in this vision. 
But the most are agreed that, whatever was the form, the 
angels were the ministry, conceived as lamps of light up- 
borne by the churches. By this interpretation, we are led 
to the same understanding as to the golden candlestick in 
the tabernacle and temple, since the scenery of the Reve- 
lation is a recognized transcript from the temple, which 
was a pattern of the heavenly things. The seven lamps 
shining as stars in the darkness of the sanctuary, through 
the continual supply of oil ministered by the priests, were 
a beautiful type of the ministry and ordinances of the 
cliurch of God, shining amid the moral darkness of the 
world, through the gifts and graces of the Spirit poured 

*Alexander on the Acts. 



312 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XL 

upon them by Jesus, the great high Priest. The day of 
Pentecost had been predicted of old, as the time of the 
shedding of light upon the Gentiles by the awakened 
church. ''Arise, shine; for thy light is come and the 
glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For behold the 
darkness shall cover the earth and gross darkness the peo- 
ple; but the Lord shall .arise upon thee, and his glory 
shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to 
thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising." — Isa. 
Ix, 1-3. By Zacharias, at the birth of John, and by Sim- 
eon, at the presentation of Jesus in, the temple. He had 
been described in this character, — "The dayspring from on 
high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in dark- 
ness and in the shadow of death ; to guide our feet into the 
way of peace." — ^Luke i, 78, 79. Says Simeon, "Mine 
eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared 
before the face of all people, — a Light to lighten the Gen- 
tiles, and the glory of thy people Israel." — lb. ii, 30-32. 
John, in the beginuiug of his gospel speaks in the same 
manner, — "In him was life and the life was the Light of 
men, and the Light shiueth in darkness." — John i, 4, 5. 
Jesus had described the ministry of John, under this figure. 
"He was a burning and a shining light." — John v, 35. 
He had distinctly foretold his disciples that they were or- 
dained to be the light of the Gentiles. "Ye are the light 
of the world. A city that is set on a hill can not be hid. 
Neither do men light a candle (luchiion, a lamp), and put 
it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light 
unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine 
before men that they may see your good works and glorify 
your Father which is in heaven." — Matt, v, 14-16. And 
now, upon them waitiug and expectant. He sheds down 
the oil of the Spirit's grace, kindles a light upon every 
brow, and inspires them to utter God's praises in the 
tongues of every land ; thus, to them signifying that the 
time Avas come to "Arise and shine," and to others an- 



Skc. LXIX.] gift of other tongues. o\6 

nounciug that the Light of the Gentiles had rise;i upon 
the world. 

Section LXIX.— TAe Giji of Otlier Tongues, 

The nature of this gift, and all the circumstances attend- 
ing it unite in investing it with a character of peculiar ini- 
pressiveness, significance and propriety among the miracles 
which attested the gospel. Devotional in its nature, and 
exercised in celebrating "the wonderful works of God," it 
was an indication of the reception and enjoyment by those 
on whom it fell of a large measure of the sanctifying graces 
of the Spirit. The report of it, spreading over Jerusalem, 
was the attraction which assembled together that vast com- 
pany, of whom three thousand were converted that day. 
The prophetic nature of the sign demonstrated the identity 
of the occasion with that predicted by Joel. And the sig- 
nificance of the scene, — God's praises uttered in many lan- 
guages, — as the anticipation of a world-wide acceptance of 
the gospel, — brings this sign into intimate accord with the 
new spirit of missionary zeal, and the tongues as of fire, 
which were the other principal phenomena of the day. It 
exhibited, in a figure, all the tribes and tongues of men, 
till then immersed in idolatry and darkness, uniting w4th 
sudden harmony in a glad burst of praise to God for the 
wonderful works of his grace. 

The conspicuous position occupied by this gift amid 
the scenes of Pentecost and the relation which it sustained 
to the outpouring of the Spirit, as being the most observ- 
able gift thereby bestowed, occasioned a manner of ex- 
pression on the subject in the book of the Acts, which has 
led to some misconception and error. It consists in the use 
of the name of the Holy Spirit, and of phrases respecting 
his fiilling on the disciples, being received by them, etc., 
when the subject spoken of is, not his renewing and invis- 
ible graces, but the sensible phenomena which attested the 
preaching of the apostles. Thus, Peter, on the day of Pen- 

27 



314 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

tecost, haviug assured the multitude that what they saw 
and heard was the fulfillment of the promise, '*! will pour 
out of my Spirit on all flesh; and your sons and your 
daughters shall prophecy," and explained that Jesus hav- 
ing received of the Father the promised Spirit, had shed 
forth this " which ye now see and hearf exhorted his. hear- 
ers to repent and be baptized, ''and ye shall receive the 
Holy Ghost. For the promise (by Joel), is to you and to 
your children (' your sous and your daughters*), and to all 
that are afar off ('all flesh')." Here, the assurance of re. 
ceiving the Holy Ghost, upon condition of repentance and 
baptism, as well as the quotation from Joel, shows that 
Peter did not speak of the renewing gift of the Spirit; 
which precedes and gives repentance, but of the miracu- 
lous gifts which followed, and which they saw and heard. 

Again, upon the mission of Peter and John to Samaria, 
it is stated that they prayed for the Samaritans, " that they 
might receive the Holy Ghost. For as yet he was fallen 
upon none of them ; only they were baptized in the name 
of the Lord Jesus. Then laid they their hands on them, 
and they received the Holy Ghost." — Acts viii, 14-17. 
Here, no distinct mention is made of miraculous endow- 
ments. But the manner in which the gift was imparted, 
the fact that they were already believers, and especially 
the proposal of Simon magus, on the occasion, show that 
it was miraculous gifts that Avere conferred. The sorcerer 
would have oifered no money for the invisible renewing 
and sanctifying graces of the Spirit. "Simon saw that 
through the laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy 
Ghost was given." And what he saw was what he sought 
to purchase. These perceptible and miraculous signs were 
therefore the things intended in the expressions used, as to 
the receiving of the Holy Ghost, and his falling upon the 
disciples. 

The same manner of expression is seen in the account 
of Paul's interview with certain disciples of John at Ephe- 



Sec. LXIX.] GIFT OF OTHER TONGUES. 315 

sus. (Acts xix, 1-7.) Paul asked them, '* Have ye re- 
ceived tlie Holy Ghost, since ye believed?" So reads the 
common version. But it should be, — " (^Elabete, pisteu- 
santes), Did ye,' upon believing receive the Holy Ghost?" 
The question had reference to the time of their first recep- 
tion of the gospel. The apostle predicates his question 
upon the assumption that these men were believers ; and 
he elsewhere testifies that faith is one of the fruits of the 
Spirit. It is thus evident, as the sequel also shows, that 
it was not the ordinary graces of the Spirit of which Paul 
inquired, but his extraordinary gifts. Such being the pur- 
port of his question, the answer is to be interpreted in ac- 
cordance with it. " They said unto him. We have not so 
much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost." That 
is. We have not heard of the miraculous gifts. "And he 
said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And 
they said unto him, Unto John's baptism." So intimately 
was Christian baptism related to the baptism and miracles 
of Pentecost, that Paul could not imagine any one to have 
received the former, and yet remain ignorant of the latter. 
To suppose, as do some, that these disciples of John meant 
to declare themselves ignorant of the existence of the Third 
Person of the Godhead, is little short of a contradiction in 
terms, in view of the essential place which was given to 
the Spirit in John's teachings, — even were we to ignore the 
Old Testament testimonies, of which John's disciples can 
not have been ignorant. What they meant, is manifest 
from the whole tenor of the narrative. In the result, the 
Holy Ghost was bestowed on them by the laying on of 
Paul's hands, "and they spake with tongues, and proph- 
esied." That was the subject of Paul's inquiry, — the sub- 
ject on which they were ignorant. And the form of ex- 
pression is another example of the style of language which 
we have seen running through the pages of the Acts on 
the subject. 

In striking coincidence with the relation of this sign, as 



316 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. ' [Part XI. 

representing the dissemination of the gospel to the nations 
of the Gentiles was the order of its manifestation. The 
command of Jesus was that the gospel should be preached 
'' in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto 
the uttermost parts of the earth." Precisely this was the 
order of manifestation of the gift of tongues. First, it was 
given to the disciples assembled in Jerusalem and repre- 
senting all Judea, on the day of Pentecost. Then Philip 
haviug preached in Samaria, to the conversion of many, 
Peter and John were sent thither ; and by the laying on 
of their hands, the gift was conferred upon the Samaritans. 
(Acts viii, 12-17.) Afterward, Peter was called to the 
house of the Gentile, Coruelius, and upon his preaching, 
"the Holy Ghost fell on all them that heard the word," 
and they spake with tongues and magnified God. (Acts 
X, 44-47.) Beside these, there is but one other account, 
in w^hich the manner of the gift is indicated. It is the 
case already mentioned, of the disciples of John in Ephe- 
sus. Respecting this sign, the following points are to be 
noticed. 

1. As to its nature, it came under the general designa- 
tion of prophecy, being an inspired utterance of the praises 
of God (Luke i, 67, 68), in which in the beginning at 
least, all the assembly, men and women united. (Acts i, 
14; ii, 1, 4, 11; 1 Cor. xi, 5.) As such, Peter declared 
it to be a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel. "Your 
sons and your daughters shall prophesy. . . . And on my 
servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out of my 
Spirit, and they shall prophesy." — vs. 17, 18. In this ex- 
ercise, while the hearts and affections of the speakers were 
edified by the Spirit, in connection with the utterances 
thus inspired, their understandings did not ordinarily appre- 
hend the meaning. (1 Cor. xiv, 2, 4, 13, 14, 18, 'l9, 28. 
Compare Rom. viii, 26, 27.) It was in " another tongue " 
than that which was native to the speaker, and usually to 
him an " unknown tongue." 



Sec. LXIX.] GIFT OF OTHER TONGUES. 317 

2. It was not, therefore, desigued to facilitate the labors 
of the apostles, by euabling tliem to preach in foreign 
languages ; and there is no reason to believe that it was 
ever so used. The Scriptures are silent on the subject, 
and the traditions of the primitive church to that effect 
are worthless. Its design seems to have been two-fold, — 
the edifying of those upon whom the gift was bestowed ; — 
and, for a sign to the hearers. (1 Cor. xiv, 22.) Of what 
it was a sign, intimation has been, alread}^, given. It was a 
token that henceforth the Spirit of all grace would be 
bestowed as freely, and work as effectually, in the hearts 
of Gentiles, as of the Jews ; and that God's praises thus 
inspired would ])e equally acceptable to him in every tongue 
and from every people. 

3. Being intended as a sign of the ingathering of the 
Gentiles, it seems at first, and until the minds of the disci- 
ples had become fully imbued with that idea, to have been 
very abundantly bestowed, and especially at Jerusalem, 
the centre whence the healing waters were to flow. In 
fact, its value as a great public sign depended materially 
upon the abundance of the gift, whereby, as on the first 
occasion, it presented a figure of all nations uniting in the 
worship of the true God and our Savior. But as the idea 
became familiar to the mind of the church, and the churches 
of the Gentiles multiplied, this gift seems to have fallen 
gradually into a subordiuate place, among the many with 
which the church was endowed. (1 Cor. xii, 1-10.) The 
occasion of its importance as a public sign having passed 
away, its chief value now consisted in the spiritual edifica- 
tion which was ministered to the possessors themselves, in 
its exercise (lb. xiv) ; and it gradually disappeared from 
the church. 

4. As the apostles were the official witnesses, appointed 
by the Lord Jesus to testify of his resurrection and exalta- 
tion to the baptizing throne, this sign was at first given in 
immediate connection with, and confirmation of, their per- 



318 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XL 

sonal testimony. It was also, with a like intimate rela- 
tion to their witnessing office, conferred by the laying on 
of their hands, upon disciples who had been gathered in 
by the ministry of others. Apart from the personal pres- 
ence and ministry of the apostles, in one or other of these 
forms, there is no Scriptural intimation, nor reason to be- 
lieve, that it was ever bestowed. 

Section LXX. — Tlie Baptisyn of Repentance for the Remis- 
sion of Sins. 

We have yet to contemplate the chief and crowning 
glory of Pentecost. The endowments conferred on the 
apostles, and the new spirit infused into the church, were 
but subsidiary means ; glorious indeed ; but only as they 
ministered to a more glorious end. The signs and wonders 
of the day were but an index hand which pointed away 
from themselves, and directed all interest and attention to 
that end. It appears, in the baptism of repentance, then 
first administered by the ascended Savior from his throne ; 
the first fruits of which were the three thousand converts 
of that day, and the harvest of which still coming in, will 
only then be complete, when all his redeemed shall have 
been gathered from every nation and kindred and people 
and tongue. 

The baptism of John is called "the baptism of repent- 
ance." — Acts xix, 4. But it was so, only as the rock in the 
wilderness was Christ ; only as the bread and cup of the 
supper are the body and blood of the Lord. " The baj> 
tism of repentance, for the remission of sins" which he 
preached (Mark i, 4), was not his own. lie preached 
*' saying that they should believe on him that should come 
after him, that is, on Christ Jesus." — Acts xix, 4. He 
confessed his own weakness, and the emptiness and futility 
of his own baptism, which was only a symbol, calling men 
to repentance, but without power to confer it. " I, indeed 
baptize you with water, unto repentance ; but he that com- 



Sec. LXX.] THR BAPTISM OF REPENTANCE. 319 

etli after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not 
worthy to bear; he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost." — 
Matt, iii, 11. Jesus, after his resurrection, told his dis- 
ciples, — " Thus it is written and thus it behooved Christ to 
sufler, and to rise from the dead the third day ; and that re- 
peiitaiice aiid remission of sins should be preached in his name, 
among all nations." — Luke xxiv, 46, 47. A few days after 
the baptism of Pentecost had been received, Peter, in the 
presence of the rulers of Israel, testified. — " Him hath God 
exalted with his right hand ; a Prince and Savior, for to 
give repentance to Israel, and ihQ forgiveness of sins." Acts 
v, 31. " The forgiveness of sins," here, is the same in the 
original, as " the remission of sins," in the other places, 
and especially in the statement concerning John's preach- 
ing. This identity of language is undoubtedly designed to 
indicate identity of subject. The baptism which John 
preached, — that of which his own was the figure, — was the 
true baptism of repentance and remission, which Jesus was 
enthroned to dispense, — the baptism which, on the day of 
Pentecost, he bestowed, by the outpouring of the Spirit, 
whose office it is to work repentance and to seal remission. 
The doctrine concerning this baptism, may be thus briefly 
summed. By it, as given by the Lord Jesus, the Spirit is 
breathed into the subjects of grace, entering them as a 
Spirit of life. This is regeneration, the immediate effect 
of which is a new nature formed after the image of God in 
righteousness and true holiness. The indwelling Spirit and 
tlie new nature, inspired by him, lust against the flesh and 
loathe sin ; and by consequence induce a true repentance 
and turning from it, and a pursuit after holiness. At the 
same time, the Spirit with which they are baptized, being 
in Christ as the head and source of life to all the body, 
and in them as members, unites them to Him by such a 
tie, — the tie of the one infinite Spirit common to both ; so 
that they are, with him, one body, and therefore, in him, par- 
take in the merits of his righteousness, and in it are justified. 



320 THE GREAT BAPTIZER, [Part XI. 

In that last discourse of our Savior, to which we have 
ah-eady so fully referred, — that discourse which was an im- 
mediate anticipation and prophecy of Pentecost, — this sub- 
ject is presented in a form of great interest and promi- 
nence. In fact, the thoughtful reader will find that entire 
discourse to center upon the two correlative ideas of the 
unity of the Persons in the Godhead, and the uuity of 
believers, in Christ. Moreover, these two doctrines are 
presented as sustaining the most intimate relation to each 
other. In answer to Philip's request, ''Lord show us the 
Father," Jesus emphasizes with reiteration his own unity 
with the Father, and exhorts the disciples, "Believe me 
that I am in the Father and the Father in me." Then, 
having promised to secure for them the presence and illumi- 
nation of the Comforter, he says, "Yet a little w^hile and 
the w^orld seeth me no more, but ye see me; because I 
live, ye shall live also. At that day, ^/e ^loll knoiv that 1 
am m my Father, and ye in me and I in you.'' — ^John xiv, 
8-11, 19, 20. This he illustrates by a parable. "I am 
the vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in me, 
and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit, for Avith- 
out me (severed from me) ye can do nothing." — lb. xy, 
1-8. In the wonderful prayer which closed that discourse, 
Jesus recurs to this theme, in language which from any 
other lips would have seemed profane, so closely does 
he identify us w^ith the glory of the Godhead. "Neither 
pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall be- 
lieve on me through their word, that they all may be one; 
as thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that they also 
may be one in us ; that the world may believe that thou 
hast sent me. And the glory w^hich thou gavest me I have 
given them; that they may be one, even as w^e are one; 
I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect 
in one; and that the Avorld may know that thou hast sent 
me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me." — lb. 
xvii, 20-23. The "glory" which the Father gave the 



Skc. lxx.] the baptism of repentance. 321 

Son and Jesus gives his people, "that they may be one," 
is the Holy Spirit, who is called "the Spirit of glory and 
of God," who rests on his people (1 Peter iv, 14), and 
"the glory of the^ Father," by whom Christ was raised 
from the dead. (Rom. vi, 4. Compare viii, 11 ; and 1 
Peter iii, 18.) 

Such is the relation which by the baptism of the Spirit 
is established between Christ and the Father and believers. 
Touching the manner and process of it, the following are 
the most important points. 

1. Each Person of the Godhead severally co-ojDerates in 
this work of grace. The Father is its Author and source, 
by whom the Sod was commissioned for its execution and 
the Spirit given him to that end. Hence, this gift of the 
Spirit to the people of God, w^hilst made through the Son, 
is constantly referred to the Father, as being primarily aud 
essentially his gift. The Son, having purchased salvation 
through the blood of his cross, is commissioned as sovereign 
administrator, to dispense it to the redeemed, — " to give 
eternal life to as many as the Father hath given him." — 
John xvii, 2. In fulfilling this office, he, as the Father's 
representative and likeness, " can do nothing of himself, 
but what he seeth the Father do." And as the Father, 
having life in himself, has given to the Son to have life in 
himself, and to quicken whom he will (John v, 19-30), he 
bestows his salvation and quickens his people, by shedding 
on tliem that Spirit of life which the Father shed on him. 
The Spirit, thus given, dwells in the believer in his own 
proper character, as being the efficient cause of life and 
holiness. 

2. AU is postulated upon the fact that the Spirit, as 
given to and dwelling in all fullness in the Lord Jesus, is 
the principle and spirit of his life ; by which he was born 
of the virgin ; by which he lived in holiness, and offered 
himself a spotless victim to justice; by which he was 
quickened and rose from the dead, and which, as his Spirit, 



322 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

the breath of his nostrils, he now breathes into whom 
he will. 

3. In baptizing his people, he imparts to them the same 
Spirit which is thus in him, to be in them the Spirit of 
life, making their bodies his temples and instruments 
(1 Cor. vi, 19 ; Rom. vi, 13) ; and their souls the subjects 
of his pervasive and transforming power. (Rom. viii, 4, 5.) 

4. In this baptism, the Holy Spirit is not sent as an 
outside messenger or agent, — a third party coming jrom 
Jesus to the objects of his grace. To impress us with the 
height of his throne and the exaltation of his majesty, he 
says, "I will %end him unto you." But, in the same dis- 
course, he also says, "At that day ye shall know that I 
am in my Father, and ye in me and I in you ;" and more- 
over promises, that " If a man love me, he will keep my 
words, and my Father will love him, and tt'e will come 
unto him and make our abode w^ith him." — John xiv, 20, 23. 
The Father and the Son are just as nigh the believer as is 
the Holy Spirit, whose office it is to attest their presence 
and interpret their communications to the soul. Since the 
Spirit is " the Spirit of Christ," — is given to him and 
remains in him in all fullness, it follows, that only in him, 
can any one receive or enjoy the indwelling and graces of 
the Spirit. Hence, the style in which, in the narrative of 
Pentecost, the baptism is spoken of, not as the sending 
of a person, but the shedding down of an element. " He 
hath shed forth this."^ Hence the manner in which, in 
Peter's quot^ation from Joel, it is repeatedly said, "I will 
pour out of my Spirit." — Acts ii, 17, 18. And hence the 
interpretation which Jesus, by anticipation, gave to the 
Pentecostal baptism ; when he breathed on the disciples 
and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost;" and the sign 
of the outbreathed mighty breath. Hence Paul's testi- 
mony, — "Your life is hid with Christ in God;" and his 
declaration as to himself, — "I live; yet not I, but Christ 

* TovTo, in the neuter gender. 



Skc. LXXL] PAUL'S DOCTRINE OF IT. 323 

liveth in me." Christ and bis people breathe one Spirit 
and live one life. Baptized by that one Spirit into one body, 
and all made to drink of that one Spirit, they are thus one 
with him, " members of his body, of his flesh and of his 
bones." — Eph. v, 30. This union is only less close and inti- 
mate than that of the Father and the Son. (John xvii, 21.) 
On it depends the whole process of justification and grace. 

Section LXXI. — Paul's Doctrine of this Baptism. 

Paul, in one brief sentence gives a comprehensive view 
of the manner and results of this Baptism. "After that 
the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man ap- 
peared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, 
but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing 
of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which 
he shed on us abundantly, through Jesus Christ our Savior; 
that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs, 
according to the hope of eternal life." — Titus iii, 4-7. 

Here, an amendment is proposed, in the fifth verse, so 
as to read, — "the laver (loutrou) of regeneration." Bishop 
Ellicott declares this rendering to be "indisputable."* 
Other expositors favor it, and the Committees of revision 

*Ellicott's Commentary, on Eph. v, 26. On the mode of 
baptism, circumstances detract greatly from the authority of 
divines of the English church. The doctrine of that body on 
the prerogative of tlie church to ordain rites and ceremonies 
has a double effect. On the one hand, it takes away the motive 
to a thorough study of the Scriptural evidence on the subject. 
On the other, it induces a sense of satisfaction in admitting 
that the apostolic mode of baptism was by immersion, and then 
pointing to the contrary form now in use, as an illustration of 
the exercise of the church's authority over the matter. When 
to this is added the veneration cherished for " the primitive 
church " of the third and fourth centuries, in which immersion 
had gained extensive footing, and the recognition of that form 
in the ruhric for baptism, hereafter quoted (below, p. 354), we 
will be justified in looking farther before accepting, as conclu- 
sive, the judgment, however pronounced, of divines of that 
church. 



324 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XL 

of the New Testament have honored it by inserting the 
word, in the margin of the Revised Version, here, and in 
Eph. V, 26. A rendering thus importunate and intrusive, 
necessitates a critical examination. The first point to be 
noticed is that the word, laver, is ambiguous; and in the 
sense which is assumed in its insertion in the text, is with- 
out warrant in the Greek language or customs. "We 
know very little of the baths of the Athenians during the 
republican period; for the account of Luciau, in his Hip- 
pias, relates to baths constructed after the Roman model. 
On ancient vases, on which persons are represented bath- 
ing, we never find any thing corresponding to a modern 
bath, in which persons can stand or sit ; but there is 
always a round or oval basin (bitter or loiiterioii) , resting 
on a stand, by the side of which those who are bathing 
are represented standing undressed and washing themselves, 
as seen in the following wood-cut, taken from Sir. W. 
Hamilton's vases." ^ The vessels used by the Greeks in 
bathing were, (1) the asaminthos, in which, sometimes, the 
bather sat, while the water was poured over him, as we 
have seen in the bath of Ulysses; (2) the loider, the laver ^ 
a vessel neither in size nor proportions adapted to the pur- 
poses of immersion, nor ever so employed, but designed 
and used as a containing vessel for the water; (3) the 
pitcher or dipper (arutaina), Avith which water was taken 
from the laver, and poured over the bather. There was 
no bath tub, nor provision of any kind for immersion. 
The mode of bathing appears in the story, in Theophrastus, 
of one who entered the bathroom (bahneion), and not being 
promptly waited on, dipping the ladle, (arufaina), poured 
it over his own person, and declared himself bathed, "no 
thanks to you."t 

* Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 
article, "Balnese." The engravings referred to, will be found 
on pages 200, 207, above. 

tBdi/^af apvraivav, avrbq eavrbv Karax^aodai, Kal ecttev on /i£?MVTai. 
Theophrastus, Char. 16 (9). 



Sec. LXXL] PAUL'S DOCTRINE OF IT. 325 

The word loutron was used, (1) for the ivater of the 
bath. In Athenseus, tlie question is asked, why hot springs 
(tJienna loutra), appearing out of the ground, are by all 
declared sacred to Hercules, if warm bathing was an un- 
manly luxury, as some asserted.^ To the same point, in 
Aristophanes, the question occurs, — " Where did you ever 
see cold Heracleian baths (loutra)T^ In Sophocles, CEdipus 
directs his daughters "to bring a hath (loutra) of running 
waters."! Homer represents the curly headed Hecameda 
heating a warm bath (hetra). \\ And Euripides describes 
Antigone pleading to be allowed "to pour waters (loutra) 
over the corpse" of Polynices;§ that is, to bathe it for 
burial. In this use of the word, together with the mode 
of bathing by the pouring of successive dippers, or waters, 
over the person, is explained the fact that the word is 
very rarely found in the singular number, and in Homer, 
the oldest of the classics, never; although in its plural 
form (loetra, contract, loutra), it frequently occurs in his 
poems. This fact is very strongly against the supposition 
that the word contained any allusion to the bathing vessel, 
which would demand the singular number. 

The word designated (2.) the washing which was accom- 
plished by the water. In the comedies of Aristophanes, 
the women in revolt, warn the men who threaten to assail 
them, — "If you happen to have soap, we will give you 
a bath (loutron) ;" which they do, by dashing buckets of 
Avater over them. Thereupon, the men run to the police, 
complaining, — "Do you not know what a ivashimj (loutron) 
these have washed us, just now, and that in our clothes, 
and without soap?''** The idiomatic expression here (" to 

* Athen?eus, Deipnosoph. xii, 6 (512). 
t Aristophanes, Xub. lOol. 

XUvuyet pvrcjv 'vddruv eveynelv ?.nvTna. Soph., CEd. Col. 1508. 
II EiaoKe ^tpfia ?.oeTfja fi);r/om/iOf 'E/ca/z^rJ^ ^Ep/njvri. — Iliad xiv, 6. 
gE^ (5' a'/./A vFKpC) 'MVTpa irepifia/.uv //' ia. — Eurip., Plioen. UUiT. 
**0?''« oloBa /.oxrrpbv o\ov aK^ rjudg eXovaav apri. — Aristophanes, 
Lysist. 377, 4G9. 



326 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XL 

wash a washing"), indicates how very close is the relation 
between the verb loxio^ to wash, and its derivative, loutron, 
a washing. The one expresses the action, or doing ; the 
other, the thing done. The same idiom presents itself in 
Antigone's account of the obsequies of her slain brother 
Polynices. " Washing it a pure washing (lousantes agnon 
loutron)," they gathered leaves, and burned " the poor 
remains."* 

As bathing was performed by the outpouring of water 
on the person, the word was thence used (3.) to designate 
libations, performed by a like outpouring of water, in honor 
of gods or heroes. Thus, Agamemnon having been mur- 
dered at the instigation of his wife Clytemnestra, Orestes 
pours (loutra) libations at his father's tomb ;t and Electra 
dissuades her sister Chrysothemis from fulfilling her moth- 
er's commission, to oifer ((loutra) libations at the same place, 
as a means of averting coming vengeance. J 

The word designates (4.) a bathing place. Plutarch 
describes Alexander as speaking of " having washed off 
the sweat of battle (loutro) with the bath of Darius. "|| In 
such passages, the controlling idea is not a supposed bath- 
ing vessel, but the cleansing water of the bath ; as is here 
indicated by the form of the participle '^(ajoolousamenoi), hav- 
ing w^ashed off;" and by the instrumental dative ''(lovtro'), 
with the bath;" which show that, whatever the construction 
of the bathing place of Darius, the Greek mode was pres- 
ent in the mind of Alexander. The idea of loutron is 
further illustrated by its compounds. At Athens, before 
a marriage, the bride was bathed with water brought from 
the fountain of Callirhoe, by a young girl, who was hence 
called (lie loutrophoros) , "the bath-water carrier." So, 



■'■■Sophocles, Antigone, 1201. 
t Uarpoq x^ovreq "kovrpd. Sophocles. Elect. 84. 
X Ov6e Tiovrpa irpoacpepeiv Trarpi lb. 434. 

II 'lojuev^ airoXovadjievot top cltto r^g fJ-c-XVQ Idpura r(I) AapEiov ?.ovTp(b. 
Plutarch, Alexand. 20. 



Sec. LXXL] PAUL' S DOCTRINE OF IT. 327 

the fee for the privilege of the bath, was, q)ihutron,—for 
the hath. 

The voice of the classics is clearly against the rendering 
in question. The fact that the Greeks are entirely silent 
as to a Avashiug by immersion, or any vessel for the pur- 
pose, — the distinct name of louter given to the only vessel 
that contained water, — the bathing performed by pouring, — 
the use of louiron to express such bathing, and to designate 
the water itself, where there was no vessel, and libations, 
in which there was water poured out, but no laver, nor 
bathing, — the primitive and peculiar employment of the 
word in the plural number, — and the derivatives formed 
from it, all inure to the one conclusion. At least, in classic 
Greek, loutron does not mean, a laver, but water for washing, 
and the washing accomplished by it ; and that, with intimate 
reference to its affusion on the person. 

Nor does the Hellenistic Greek utter a different testi- 
mony. In the Song of Songs, it is said, — " Thy teeth are 
like a flock, shorn, which came up from the luashing (apo tou 
loutroii)." So reads the Septuagint. From Ecclesiasticus 
(above, p. 169) we have the proverb, '* He that is baptized 
from the dead, and again toucheth the dead, what availeth 
his washing (loutro) ?" Here, cleansing by the sprinkled 
Avater of separation is called loutron, a washing. So Philo 
(above, p. 175) describes the purifying rites, the washings 
(butra) and the sprinklings, of the Jews. Josephus says 
of the two springs of Machserus, near the Dead Sea, the 
one hot, and the other cold, that " when mingled together 
they make a most pleasant bath (loutron). "^-^ And Paul, 
himself, writes that Christ gave himself for the church, 
'' that he might cleanse it, purifying it with the wash- 
ing (to loutro) of water." Here the new version must 
cither make nonsense of tlie passage, or do violence to tlie 
Greek. Either it must re^d, " purifying it with the laver," 
that is, with the bath tub, not the washing; or, "m the 

* Jewish War. VII, vi, 3. 



328 THE GREAT DAPTIZER. [Part XL 

laver," a rendering forbidden by the instrumental dative 
(to loutro.) 

On the other hand, in more than a dozen places, — 
wherever the la vers of the tabernacle and the temple are 
mentioned, the Septuagint is louter, — the same word, in the 
same sense in which it was used by the Greeks to desig- 
nate the containing vessel. In a word, neither in the 
classics, nor in Hellenistic Greek, is loutron ever found in 
the sense of a laver, or bathing vessel. Or, if it is so used, 
the Lexicons ignore it ; Stephanus, in his great Thesaurus, 
knows nothing of it ; and the advocates of that rendering 
do not adduce it. And were such example found, it would 
be wholly insignificant as to the interpretation of Paul, in 
presence of all these facts. 

If now, we ask for the evidence in favor of the new 
version, the answer presents two i^omts,— first, that certain 
versions of the New Testament, — the Vulgate, Claromon- 
tauus, Syriac, and Gothic, — have so translated loutron; and 
second, that in accordance with Greek usage, the termina- 
tion, on (loutro?i), justifies J:he assumption that the word 
designates an instrumental object. As to the first consid- 
eration, — it may be asserted with confidence that we are 
as fully possessed of the means of determining the question 
as were the unknown authors of those versions ; and the 
growing prevalence at that time, of a ritualistic spirit in 
the church, and the consequent introduction of the form 
of immersion, sufiiciently account for the rendering, apart 
from any critical considerations. Respecting the termina- 
tion, on, the number of examples in which it is found in 
words that designate instrumental objects is too few to es- 
tablish a rule. But were it accepted as decisive, the whole 
weight of its authority is against, instead of being in favor 
of the proposed amendment. A laver, and especially a 
Greek laver, is no instrument *of bathing. Perhaps the 
arutaina, the dipper, might be so called. But the water ^ 
and the ivashmg, each are instrumental causes of the deam- 



Sec. LXXI.] PAUL'S DOCTRINE OF IT. 329 

inq, the salvation ; of which, in the text, the apostle says, — 
" he saved us {d'm loutro) by meam of the ivashing." Nor 
do the classics ignore this relation. Plato (above, p. 181) 
asks concerning " the washings (loutro) and sprinklings," — 
"Are they not effectual to one end, to render a man pure, 
both as to body and soul?" 

In the text, loutron means, the washing, but with inti- 
mate reference to the water as the means, — a sense which 
we have just seen illustrated from the classics. Strictly, 
the regeneration is the washing, of which the water is the 
instrument. The figure thus used, the apostle immediately 
explains. "The washing of regeneration, even the renew- 
ing of the Holy Ghost." As water is the instrument of 
washing, so the Spirit shed down by Jesus Christ is the in- 
strument of that spiritual work which is indicated alike 
by the two identical words, regeneration, and renewing. 
Paul then proceeds with the pronoun " which," — equally 
appropriate, in the construction of the original, to the water 
(loutrou), or to the Holy Spirit, as its antecedent; and, 
in fact, referring to both, as identified in one, — "which 
water, even the Spirit, he shed on us abundantly (dia) by 
the hand of Jesus Christ." Orestes speaks of himself and 
companions " (cheontes loutra) pouring water" of libation at 
the tomb. So Paul speaks of ^^ {loutrou hon execheeu) the 
water of cleansing which He shed forth on us." In the 
latter case, the prefix, ex, emphasizes the source of the 
outpouring, but otherwise the conception and action of the 
two passages is the same. By the hand of his Son, God 
the Father from on high sheds his Spirit, and baptizes us 
with his renewing power. Thereby united to the Lord 
Jesus, we are thus invested with his righteousness, and so, 
says the text, "are justified by his grace." And since by 
the same union we share his relation as Sou; — "if sons, 
thou heirs," "according to the hope of eternal life." 

This baptism of the Spirit is the theme of frequent dis- 
cussion in Paul's writings. lie particularly dwells on it as 

2S 



330 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

being the instrumental cause of that intimate unity which ex- 
ists in the body of Christ, and of equality in privilege among 
all the members, Jews and Gentiles. "As the body is one, 
and hath many members, and all the members of that one" 
body, being many are one body, so also is Christ. For, by one 
Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews 
or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free ; and have been all 
made to drink one Spirit. . . . Novv^ ye are the body of 
Christ, and members in particular." — 1 Cor. xii, 12-14, 27. 
Here, the figure of baptism is followed u]^ by the expres- 
sion, "have been all made to drink one Spirit;" — literally, 
" have been all watered with one Spirit." The preposition, 
(eis) "mto one Spirit," is rejected by the critical editors as 
spurious; and the verb {^otizo) means, to oj9/;/?/ water, 
either externally or internally, — to water, to cause to drink. 
Compare in the same epistle, 1 Cor. iii, 2, " I have /ec? i/ait 
(epotisa) with milk;" and Q-S, — "Apollos luatered (ejMisen).^' 

The same point is set forth in another epistle — "En- 
deavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of 
peace. There is one body, and one Spirit ; even as ye are 
called in one hope of your calling ; one Lord, one faith, one 
baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and 
through all, and in you all. But unto every one of us is 
given grace, according to the measure of the gift of 
Christ. . . . That we henceforth be no more children, . . . 
but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in 
all things, which is the Head, even Christ, from whom the 
whole body, fitly joined together and compacted by that 
which every joint supplieth, according to the efl^ectual 
w^orkiug in the measure of every part, maketh increase of 
the body, unto the edifying of itself in love." — Eph. iv, 
3-16. 

That the "one baptism " here spoken of is that wherein, 
"by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body," is manifest 
from the connection and the analogy of the other passages 
here presented above and below. To suppose it to be water 



Skc. LXXL] PAUL'S DOCTRINE OF IT. 331 

baptism, would be to make the apostle exclude that spiritual 
aud real baptism of which water baptism is the shadow, 
and to which, iu all his writings, he coustautly gives so 
much importance as the means of the union which he here 
discusses. 

In another place, the apostle represents this baptism as 
merging all other relations in the one tie of identity with 
Christ. "As many of you as have been baptized into 
Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor 
Greek ; there is neither bond nor free ; there is neither 
male nor female ; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if 
ye be Christ's then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs ac- 
cording to the promise." — Gal. iii, 27-29. Here, again, it 
is clear that the baptism spoken. of is that of the Spirit. 
The oneness with Christ, thus complete by this bap- 
tism, Paul uses as a powerful argument of the duty of his 
people to be dead to the world that crucified him, dead to 
sin and all the works of the old man, and alive only to 
God. (Rom. vi, 3-6; Col. ii, 9-11.) These passages will 
receive special consideration hereafter. 

The unity of conception which pervades these Script- 
ures is manifest, and makes it evident that they all contem- 
plate one and the same baptism, that in which by one 
Spirit all Christ's people are baptized into one body, the 
spiritual body of Christ. 

Touching the nature of this baptism, the following are 
the chief particulars : 

1. The entrance of the Spirit shed down by Jesus is 
regeneration, or the new birth. It is the imparting of new 
life to the soul, — the introduction of a principle of grace, 
" the new man," which, like its source, the eternal Spirit, 
is immortal and supreme wherever it exists; and which, 
sustained and nourished by the indwelling Spirit, will grow 
and expand until it gains full and exclusive possession of 
all the faculties and powers, making the soul its seat, the 
body its temple, and the members its instruments. 



332 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XI. 

2. Coincident with this is the death of the old man, 
the destruction of the controlling principle and power of 
evil in the soul. Hitherto, it reigned supreme. But now, 
slain; and, cast out, it remains, a " body of death" in the 
members; offensive in its corruption, and by its loathsome- 
ness acting as a stimulus to the opposing principle of 
grace. (Rom. vii, 24.) 

3. The result is, that whereas, formerly, the sinful aftec- 
tions " did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto 
death," "now, being made free from sin and become serv- 
ants to God," his people have " their fruit unto holiness." — 
Rom. vii, 5; vi, 22. 

4. The Spirit thus given is not a transient influence ; 
but is within the believer, a well of living water, spring- 
ing up unto everlasting hfe ; — a w^ell, from which it is his 
privilege at all times to drink of that one Spirit. Thereby, 
'' to every one of us is given grace according to the meas- 
ure of the gift of Christ;" so that we " grow up into him 
in all things which is the Head, even Christ." — Eph. iv, 
7, 15. Thus grace is nourished, in preparation for glory. 

5. While such are the effects of this baptism on the spir- 
itual condition of the redeemed, equally important are its 
influences on their external relations. The first is their 
justification. United to the Lord Jesus, as members of his 
body, the consequence is that their sius are laid to the 
charge of their Head, and satisfaction' for them credited to 
the blood of his cross. On the other hand, his righteous- 
ness is recognized as theirs, and in it they stand, not only 
pardoned, but justified ; approved, and entitled to the in- 
heritance of glory. They are '' accepted in the Beloved ; m 
whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgive- 
ness of sins according to the riches of his grace." — Eph. i, 
6,7. 

6. Another result is their reception to the relation and 
privileges of children of God. Born of the Spirit, — born 
of God, they are thus by inheritance children. Members 



Sec. LXXII.] NOAH SAVED BY WATER. 333 

of Christ, — the first-born, the eternal Sou, — they share iu 
his relation, and are in him sous ; and if sous theu heirs ; — 
heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ. 

7. The final result is the resurrection unto glory. "If 
the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell 
in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also 
quicken your mortal bodies, by his Spirit that dwelleth in 
you." — Rom. viii, 11. 

Such is the one baptism, of which "all ritual baptisms 
are mere shadowy symbols, — the baptism which Paul pro- 
claims, — "One Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph. iv, 
5), a baptism, one and alone from its very nature, as dis- 
pensed by the one only Mediator, in the bestowal of that 
one Spirit, which belongs to and is therefore imparted by 
him alone. Thus have we the perfect antitype of the bap- 
tisms of the Old Testament, — the administrator, Jesus the 
great High Priest ; the element, that living water, the 
Holy Spirit; the mode, his outpouring upon us from heaven ; 
the effect, washing to the corrupt, — life to the dead. By 
this means, does our Baptizer bestow on his people all 
grace for the present time, and the resurrection and glory 
in the end. 

Section LXXII. — lYoa/i Saved by Water. 

Beside the places before cited, one remains to be noticed. 
It is 1 Peter iii, 17-22. Tliere are some various readings 
in the MSS., although none that materially affect the inter- 
l)retation. Adopting what seem the best, the passage is as 
follows : — " It is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer 
for well doing, than for evil doing. For Christ, also, once 
suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring 
us to God, being put to death as to the flesh, but quick- 
ened as to the Spirit. By which also he went and preached 
to the spirits in prison, formerly disobedient, when the 
longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the 
ark was i)reparing, in which few, that is, eight, souls were 



334 THE GREAT BAPTI7.ER. [Part XI. 

saved by water. You also now antitype baptism saves 
(not the patting away of the filth of the flesh, but [con- 
formity to] the demand of a good conscience toward God) ; 
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead ; who is 
at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels 
and authorities and powers being subjected to him." 

Both Peter and those to whom his epistles were ad- 
dressed, were familiar with Paul's writings. (2 Peter iii, 
15, 16.) In the passage here cited, the preacher of the 
day of Pentecost speaks of that Spirit baptism the begin- 
ning of which he had then witnessed, in a style w^hich con- 
stantly reminds us of the language and manner of Paul, on 
the same subject. If Peter speaks of Christ as having been 
" quickened by the Spirit," or rather " quickened as to the 
spirit." Paul tells us that thus he became, " a quickening 
spirit." — 1 Cor. xv, 45. If Peter states that *' antitype 
baptism now saves us," the baptism, that is, of the Spirit, 
of which water baptism is the type, — Paul says that " He 
saves us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of 
the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through 
Jesus Christ." — Tit. iii, 5. Peter represents this baptism 
as saving us "by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the 
dead;" and Paul, to the same effect, testifies that "even 
when we were dead in sins God hath quickened us together 
with him and hath raised us up together" (Eph. ii, 1, 
4-6) ; and that we are " buried with him in the baptism, 
wdierein also ye are risen with him, through the faith of 
the operation of God who hath raised him from the 
dead." — Col. ii, 12. To the account which, on the day of 
Pentecost, Peter gave of the exaltation of the Lord Jesus 
to God's right hand, he here adds, — "angels and authori- 
ties and powers being subject to him," — language in which 
we recognize the style of Paul's repeated descants on the 
same theme. (Eph. i, 20, 21 ; Col. i, 16 ; ii, 10.) As Peter's 
language is so thoroughly imbued with the style of thought 
and expression of Paul, we need not hesitate to interpret 



Sec. LXXIL] NOAH SAVED BY WATER. 335 

the passage by the doctruie of the great apostle of the 
Gentiles. 

The design of Peter is, to encourage the people of God 
in the endurance of injustice and persecution for righteous- 
ness sake. His first argument is the example of Christ, who 
suffered patiently the just for the unjust, "being put to 
death as to the flesh," that is, "as to his natural life," 
" but quickened as to the Spirit," inasmuch as his death 
Avas to him the exhausting of the curse under which he 
died, and was, therefore, the release of the Spirit of life 
which was in him, from all restraint upon his quickening 
energies, by which, therefore, he rose from the dead. Thus, 
the very sufferings of his death were his door of entrance 
into life. Unexpressed, but latent in the apostles' argument 
is the fact which, on the same subject, he states, in his 
second epistle, that "the longsuffering of the Lord is sal- 
vation" (2 Peter iii, 15), that having so pitied the ungodly 
as to die for them, praying for his enemies on the very 
cross, he now spares the persecutors of his people, if pos- 
sibly they may repent (2 Peter iii, 9), and that, in the end, 
"the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temp- 
tations" (or persecutions), "and to reserve the unjust unto 
the day of judgment to be punished." — lb. ii, 9. This, he 
illustrates by the case of Noah and the old world. The 
question as to "the spirits in* prison" (Vs. 19), does not 
belong to the present inquiry. Tlie point of interest is 
the eight souls "saved by water." — Vs. 20. To under- 
stand this, it is necessary to keep it distinctly in mind that 
the point to which the apostle's argument is directed is, — 
the righteous suffering persecution, and the persecutors 
spared. He assumes what can not but have been the fact, 
that during the one hundred and twenty years of the 
building of the ark, Noah, "a preacher of righteousness" 
(2 Peter ii, 5), was exposed to bitter persecution. If we 
consider that "the earth was filled with violence" (Gen. 
vi, 11-13), that Noah's preaching could not but be exceed- 



336 THE GREAT BAPT17.ER. [Part XI. 

ingly offensive to those whose wickedness he reproved, and 
that his holy life, as "he walked with God,'' and his build- 
ing of the ark, by which he "condemned the world" (Heb. 
xi, 7), combined to intensify the hostility, it must be evi- 
dent that nothing but the almighty protection under which 
he was sheltered could have saved him and all his from 
speedy destruction. It also seems to be implied by the 
language here, and by the connection in which Peter else- 
where introduces the same matter (2 Peter ii, 5-9), that 
when the flood came, the enmity and hatred had reached 
a crisis; so that the call to enter the ark was like the 
bringing of Lot out of Sodom, a rescue from present de- 
struction by the wicked. Thus, the very waters which 
purged the world by sweeping away the ungodly, were 
the salvation of the eight persons, who shut up in the 
ark, were upborne upon their bosom. They were "saved 
by water," while, as it rose, the world ready to perish 
would, in mad and impotent despair, have wreaked a blind 
vengeance upon the prophet and his family, for the terri- 
ble judgment of God; like Ahab with Elijah, in the days 
of the famine. But "the Lord shut him in" (Gen. vii, 
16), and the waters bore them up, safe amid their perish- 
ing enemies. 

Peter next points out that analogous to this is the sal- 
vation of Christ's people, — that as the waters of the deluge 
were the destruction of the old world, but life to the new, 
to Noah, and his house, — so the baptism of the Spirit is 
death to the old man, but life to the new, through union 
with the Lord Jesus and participation in his life. "You 
also, now, antitype baptism saves, by the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ from the dead. Forasmuch then as Christ 
hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves with the 
same mind; for he that hath suffered in the flesh" (that is, 
as stated immediately after, he that hath become "partaker 
of Christ's sufferings"), "hath ceased from sin." — Ch. iv, 
1, 13. Here we recognize perfect identity of thought and 



Sicc. LXXIL] NOAH SAVED BY WATER. 337 

argument with what has already appeared iu Paul's writ- 
ings. *'So many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, 
were baptized into his death. Therefore, we are buried 
with him by the baptism into his death, that like as Christ 
was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, 
even so we also should walk in newness of life." — Rom. 
vi, 3, 4. 

The conclusion of Peter's argument is found, a little 
farther on, — "Beloved, think it not strange concerning 
the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange 
thing happened unto you. But rejoice, inasmuch as ye 
are partakers of Christ's sufferings, that when his glory 
shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding 
joy."— 1 Peter iv, 12, 13. So Paul says, "If so be that 
we suflfer with him, that w^e may be also glorified to- 
gether." — Rom. viii, 17. It is evident that the two great 
apostles are perfectly united in their testimony concerning 
this baptism and its relations to the plan of salvation. 

In the foregoing exegesis, I have regarded both forms 
of the pronoun iu the beginning of the twenty-first verse, 
as alike spurious ; at the same time that the language of 
that verse is understood as containing a reflex allusion to 
Noah and his family "saved by water." The phrase "an- 
titype baptism" does not, it is. true, necessitate the previous 
mention of a type baptism. But it certainly does invite 
us to look for, and expect such mention, an expectation 
confirmed by the presence of the particles, ^''aho^ now^ 
"You, a/.so, now, antitype baptism saves." Here seems to 
to be an allusion to something in the past, corresponding 
to the antitype baptism of the present. And when we 
find the immediately preceding mention of the salvation 
by water of Noali and his family, we can not be mistaken 
in recognizing this as the type to wiiich, in the phrase 
"antitype baptism," Peter refers. The salvation, therefore, 
of Noah by the waters of the deluge was a baptism. Dr. 
Dale asserts the ark and not the water, to have been the 

29 



338 THE GREAT BAPTIZER, [Part X I. 

instrument of the salvation, and quotes examples to justify 
the translation of dia hudatos, by ^ ^through the water,'' as 
a medium and not an instrument. But (1.) it is, of course, 
true that this is one meaning of dia. (2.) One of his ex- 
amples, "faith tried by fire" (1 Peter i, 7), shows that it 
may also express instrumental relations. (3.) More perti- 
nent would have been a citation of the parallel clause 
which immediately follows the phrase in question. As 
Noah is stated to have been saved " by water" (dia hudatos), 
in the typical baptism, so "antitype baptism saves us by 
the resurrection (dia anastaseos), of Jesus Christ." The 
parallel, here, between type and antityj)e, requires that in 
both clauses, the preposition should be understood in the 
same sense; and, as in the antitype, dia certainly points 
out the resurrection of Christ, as being the instrument or 
means of our salvation, so in the type, must we under- 
stand it to designate the waters of the flood as the means 
of Noah's deliverance. 

Section LXXIII. — Christ's Baptizing Administration. 

Thus Jesus fills the throne in the heavens, and possesses 
all power and prerogative for accomplishing the purposes 
of the Godhead, concerning the human race — the redeemed 
and the lost; concerning Satan and his angels, and the 
whole universe of God, moral and physical, as inseparably 
connected with the moral history and destinies of these. 
And thus, in every aspect of his work, as it progresses, 
from the day of Pentecost to the final consummation and 
glory, he is in the exercise of that office wherein he was 
announced by his herald John, as he that should baptize 
with the Holy Ghost, and with fire,— that office of the 
gracious aspects of which as toward his people, the baptism 
of water has been, for all ages, the symbol and seal. For, 
on Pentecost, Jesus only began to fulfill the prophecy and 
promise, — " I will pour out of my Spirit on all flesh." Not 
even yet is the breadth of its meaning accomplished. He 



Sec. LXXIIL] CHRIST S ADMINISTRATION. 339 

will coutinue to breathe his Si^irit into his people, till all 
are gathered iu. So, of them, individually, the purifying, 
although assured by the first baptism which they respect- 
ively receive, is brought to fruition only through the daily 
breathings of Christ's life in them, the influences of his 
Spirit quickening them continually ; as the leper was not 
cleansed by one aflusion, but was sprinkled seven times. And 
while the idea of baptism has special reference to the first 
act of grace in bestowing the Sjnrit, it views that act as 
comprehensive of the whole process of grace, which is 
potentially involved in, and secured by it. 

It is not for us to know the times and seasons " which 
the Father hath put in his own power." — Acts i, 7. But, 
respecting some things of vital interest as to the order and 
issue of coming events, in the history of Christ's baptizing 
office, we do know by the testimony of God. 

1. Whatever, to our limited and carnal apprehensions, 
may be the mysteries of the past history of the gospel in 
the world, there has been no lack of power in the baptizing 
scepter of Christ, nor mistake in its exercise. The Baptizer 
is that Son of man in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the 
Godhead bodily, and who is the personal Wisdom of God, 
and the Power of God. His blood paid the price of salva- 
tion. His arm overcame and his heel crushed Ihe serpent, 
during the days of his humiliation in the flesh. And now, 
enthroned in power, he doeth in his wisdom according to 
his pleasure. If the heatlien of old could say, " The mills 
of the gods grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine," well 
may we confide in our King, that he need not make haste, 
in the fulfillment of his purposes. " Beloved, be not 
ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord 
as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." — 
2 Pet. iii, 8. Four thousand years rolled by, before the 
])romise made to the fallen woman in the garden was ful- 
filled, in the virgin birth of the babe of Bethlehem. And 
now, "the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the 



340 THE GREAT DAPTl'AER. [Part XI. 

end it sliall speak and not lie ; though the promise tarry 
wait for it ; because it will surely come ; it will not tarry." — 
Hab. ii, 3. 

It does not fall in with the purposes of the present dis- 
cussion to enter into the prophetic question, as to the time 
and manner of the future developments and glory of the 
Kedeemer's kingdom. Respecting it, one thing is certain. 
The past has been a time of the hiding of his power; but 
the light of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will 
yet cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Tlie 
Branch of Jesse " shall stand for an enSign of the people; 
to it shall the Gentiles seek; and his rest shall be glori- 
ous." — Isa. xi, .1, 10. 

2. Every soul to whom the grace of God has come, 
from the day of Pentecost to this hour, has received it from 
the immediate hand of Jesus, baptizing him with the Holy 
Ghost. And so it will be to the end. Thus, each one so 
redeemed is a new proof and pledge that Jesus fills the 
throne, — that Satan and all the powers of darkness are 
under his feet; and that the hearts of men are in his 
hands, to give eternal life to as many as the Father hath 
given him. 

3. AVhen the end shall come, and the mystery of God 
shall be finished, it will appear that in every aspect of the 
issues joined with Satan, triumph and glory crown the head 
of the Son of man. Nor will it be the mere force of phys- 
ical omnipotence crushing the feebler powers of Satan. 
But the glory of perfect righteousness, of wisdom and un- 
derstanding, of counsel and might, of knowledge and fear 
of the Lord, in the Head and leader of the salvation, — a 
perfection, not merely of moral excellence but of all gifts 
and endowments, tried and proved, first, in the form of a 
servant under the law, in obedience and suflferings, amid 
the temptations of the w^orld and the flesh, the wiles of the 
devil, and the inflictions of God, — a perfection then shown 
upon the throne of glory, in administering with perfect 



Sec. LXXIII.] CHRIST'S A DML\7STRATI0N. 341 

wisdom and perfect skill the vast and various affairs of 
God's boundless empire, thwarting and turning to confusion 
the plots and policies of Satan and his angels, rectifying 
the disorders wrought by the enemy, and vindicating God's 
glory impeached th-rough man. 

It will be a moral triumph revealed in each one of the 
redeemed, once a prostrate slave of Satan and sin, baptized 
and quickened, and aroused to struggle for liberty, and 
made more than conqueror, in the conflict, through the 
grace and Spirit of Christ, over Satan and all his powers 
without, and indwelling sin and corruption, — each one 
scarred with the wounds of battle, but all — the crushed 
serpent writhing beneath their feet, — wearing the white 
robes of triumph and waving the palms of victory ; — all 
clothed in the righteousness of One, and each grown to the 
stature of Christ, in the perfection of holiness and beauty, 
after the image of God. 

It will be the moral triumph of the whole ransomed 
host, by one Spirit baptized into one body, her garments 
of wrought gold and needle- work, received and revealed, 
spotless and complete in all divine perfections, — the bride 
of the Lamb, the glory of her husband, as he is the image 
and glory of God. (1 Cor. xi, 7.) In them shall the 
principalities and powers in the heavenly places behold and 
study and admire the reflected likeness of the unapproach- 
able glory of the infinite Invisible. 

It will be the triumph involved in all this revelation of 
glory and blessedness in contrast with the spectacle of 
Satan and his followers and work, exposed before all intel- 
ligences, in shame and everlasting contempt ; — his achieve- 
ments seen in discord and darkness, in sin and suffering 
and sorrow, in lamentation and woe, in the loss to him and 
to his of all the divine perfections in which they were cre- 
ated, and in distortion, deformity and discord, possessing and 
pervading them all ; his confident wisdom and power turned 
to imbecile folly, and his conspiracies and wiles made the 



342 THE GREAT BAPT17.ER. [Part XL 

occasions and means of fulfilling God's plan which he op- 
posed, and crowning the Son of man with glory. 

The true dignity and significance of the rite of baptism 
can only then be adequately realized Avhen we appreciate 
this comprehensive extent and grandeur of the baptizing 
office of Christ, signified by it. In the fulfillment of that 
office he now orders all things ; and its exercise must be 
continuous to the end. The Great Baptizer must breathe 
the Spirit of life into all that mighty multitude, out of 
every generation and race, whom the Father has given 
Him. He must send fire upon the earth, and divide be- 
tween his people and his enemies, and vindicate the Fa- 
ther's sovereignty and grace in all his dealings with the 
wicked. He must, at last, by the quickening virtue of the 
baptism of His Spirit, raise up his saints, — their bodies 
glorious as his own glorious body, and their souls perfect 
in holiness, — and place them on the throne of judgment 
with himself; judge and cast the wicked out of his kingdom ; 
confirm the holy angels in rectitude and blessedness, and 
cast Satan, — thwarted, defeated and bound in chains of 
darkness, — into the gulf of fire, — him and his angels and 
followers. He must purge the earth and heavens with 
fire, from the defilement which Satan and sin have wrought, 
and out of them create and adorn the new heavens and the 
new earth, the abode of righteousness, the home of the 
holy and the blessed, — where the many sons shall dwell 
with God and the Lamb. He must make all things new. 

Then may the triumphant Son of man proclaim his 
work accomplished, and his office ended. Then may he, — 
not now from the cross, but from the throne, — cry, "It is 
finished !" "The former things are passed away, and behold 
I have made all things new." Sin and the curse are abol- 
ished; — tears, and death, and sorrow, and crying, and pain 
are no more ; and in life and immortality the earth-born 
sons of God possess the glory. 

"It is done!" The floor is purged; the garner filled; 



Sec. LXXIV.] ARGUMENT FROM THIS. 343 

and the chaff burned. The baptism is accomplished. Then 
shall the Son, his commission ftdfilled, deliver up the king- 
dom to God even the Father, and shall himself also be 
subject to Him that put all things under him, that God 
may be all in all. (1 Cor. xv, 24, 28.) 

Section LXXIV. — Argument from tJie Real to Ritual 
Baptism. 

Thus is Jesus revealed in characters of unspeakable 
grandeur, as the true and only Baptizer, — his the real bap- 
tism, of which all others are mere shadows. His baptizing 
office is the very end of his exaltation, the peculiar and dis- 
tinguishing characteristic of his throne and scepter. As 
the cross of Christ is the symbol of the whole doctrine of 
his humiliation, sorrow and death, so his baptizing scepter 
represents the whole doctrine of his exaltation his kingdom 
and glory. And, as the sacrament of the supper shows 
forth his abasement and atonement for sin ; so, that of bap- 
tism proclaims the glory and power of his exaltation, and the 
riches of salvation and grace which he sheds on his people 
from on high. The ritual ordinance therefore if true to 
its office, must be true to the similitude of the real bap- 
tism, — must represent and proclaim those very things which 
are realized in the office and work of the great Baptizer. 
But what has the real baptism to do with the humiliation 
of Christ, in any of its aspects? And, especially, what has 
it to do with the burial of his dead body ? With the throne 
of his power, the prerogatives of his scepter, the grace, 
the grandeur and the glory of his achievements to the end, 
its relations are intimate and from them inseparable. But 
with humiliation and shame, with death and the grave, it 
holds no relations but those of boundless distance and in- 
finite contrast. 

Here then, at the culminating point in the history of 
baptism and the plan of God's grace, as identified with it, 
the divergence of the immersion theory from the statements, 



344 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Pakt XI. 

conceptions and principles of the Scriptures on the subject 
interposes between them a widening and deepening gulf, 
broad, profound and impassable. Whilst the Scriptural 
rite points exultiugly upward to Christ's high throne, and 
calls us to lift up our heads and admire and adore the 
height of his majesty and the grace and grandeur of his 
baptizing work, — the immersion theory constrains its vota- 
ries, with bowed heads and stooping forms, to grope among 
the graves, in the vain endeavor to trace some fanciful re- 
semblance between the rite which they espouse and the 
form and manner of the burial of the dead, — a burial, 
too, which, as thus imagined, the crucified One never 
received ! 

The doctrine of the real baptism is thus utterly incon- 
gruous to that of immersion. Equally irreconcilable with 
that form are all the phenomena and expressions used in 
connection with the administering of Christ's baptism. 
The sound from heaven as of an outbreathed mighty 
breath poured down, and filling all the place, was the only 
phenomenon of Pentecost indicative of form or mode. 
And its mode was affusion, or outpouring, and descent from 
above. The language in wdiich the transaction is every- 
where described and referred to is equally specific and in- 
variable. It was a shedding down — a pouring down — a 
falling upon — a filling of the disciples ; — a style of expres- 
sion used, not on the occasion, only, but in every subse- 
quent allusion to the subject. So, the propehcy cited by 
Peter is an express definition of this as the mode. "I 
will pour out of my Spirit." But, more than this, it iden- 
tifies the outpouring of Pentecost with all those Old Testa- 
ment prophecies, in which the gift of the Spirit is spoken 
of in terms of pouring and sprinkling. All these, again, 
as we have formerly seen, are intimately associated with 
the baptisms of the Levitical system. Those baptisms 
represented in ritual form the things which the prophets 
set forth in analogous figures. If Christian baptism de- 



Sec. LXXIV.] ARGUMENT FROM THIS. 345 

parts from the Old Testament mode, it to the same degree 
departs from tlie form in which the grace of Pentecost is 
uniformly predicted, represented, described, and referred to. 
The attempt is made to evade the force of these facts 
by the assertion that the "sound from heaven as of a 
rushing mighty wind," "filled all the place where they 
were sitting;" and that the discij)les were immersed in it. 
But (1.) the immersion thus imagined is, an inversion of 
the Baptist theory. The result of an admitted affusion, 
it is an application of the element to the person, and by 
a sustained analogy, on Baptist principles, would require 
that the grave should have been brought and put about 
the body of Jesus, and that, in water baptism, the element 
should be poured over the subject, until he is covered, 
although drowning would be the inevitable result. (2.) 
There is, in fact, no analogy, except in the jingle of words, 
between an immersion in water, which is immediately and 
inevitably fatal to life, and an immersion in the vital air, 
which is the very breath of life, the withdrawal of which 
is fatal. (3.) If Christian baptism sustains any real rela- 
tion at all to the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which Christ 
administers — as it assuredly does — it is that of type to an- 
titype — of a similitude to the reality. Both the form and 
the meaning of the rite must be derived from the nature 
of the reality, of which it is the symbol. If then the 
immersion of the disciples in the wind or breath of Pente- 
cost is the antitype symbolized in the outward form of 
baptism, the ordinance means, not the burial of Christ's 
dead body, but the imparting of his Spirit of life to his 
people. Thus the Baptist theory of the form and meaning 
of the ordinance is exploded, since the two ideas can not 
stand together. They are niutually destructive and the 
incongruity is fatal to the whole scheme, which can not 
stand W'ithout an immersion on Pentecost; and can not 
endure the crucial test of the only immersion which they 
can pretend to discover there. 



346 THE GREAT BAPTIZER. [Part XL 

The alternative is inexorable. If that which Christ 
dispenses is the normal, the antitype, baptism, then by it 
the ritual baptisms of both economies are to be interpreted ; 
and their signification is to be found, not in the sepulchre, 
but on the throne — in the Spirit thence poured out, and 
the life and salvation thence dispensed ; — and the form of 
the ordinance must needs correspond to its meaning. If, 
on the other hand, immersion in water is the normal bap- 
tism, and the burial of the body of Jesus, its meaning, 
then the baptism of Pentecost with all its phenomena and 
doctrine is to be struck from the record, as no baptism at 
all. Ij that which Christ dispenses is baptism, immersion 

is 7lOt. 



Sec. LXXV.J BAPTHO AND RESURRECTION. 347 



Part XII. 

THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. 

Section LXXV. — Baptizo and the Resurrection. 

THE argument in proof that the discij^les of John and 
of Christ were immersed comprehends four essential 
propositions. (1) That baptizo means, to dip, to phmge, 
to immerse, to submerge, — one or other of these, and noth- 
ing else; (2) That the prepositions, eis, en, ek, and apn, as 
used in the New Testament, in connection Avith baptizo, 
require and enforce that meaning; (3) That the resort of 
John to the Jordan, and to Enon, "because there was 
much water there," is conclusive to the same effect; (4) 
That Paul, in saying that w^e are "buried with Christ in 
baptism," refers to the form of immersion; (5) It is, more- 
over, held that the account of the baptism of the Ethio- 
pian eunuch shows it to have been by immersion. The 
last point will be considered further on. 

As to baptizo, enough has already appeared to render it 
certain that the definition heretofore insisted on by Bap- 
tists is untenable, and that the word, in itself, determines 
nothing as to form. It was formerly maintained as un- 
questionable, that bapto and baptizo are strictly equivalent ; 
and that the meaning is, " to dip, and nothing but dip." 
This assumption may now be considered obsolete. It is 
definitely aband(med by the ablest representatives of im- 
mersion. Dr. Conant having been appointed thereto by 
the American (Baptist) Bil:)le Union entered into an elab- 
orate investigation of "The Meaning and Use of Baptizo!^ 
In a treatise published under that title, he thus states the re- 
sult. ** The word, immerse, as well as its synonyms, immerge, 



348 THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. [rAux XIl'. 

etc., expresses the full import of the Greek word, baptlzein. 
The idea of emersion is not included in it. It means simply 
to put into or under water; without determining whether 
the object immersed sinks to the bottom, or floats in the 
liquid, or is immediately taken out. This is determined, 
not by the word, itself, but by the design of the act, in 
each particular case. A living being, put under water with- 
out intending to drown him, is of course to be immediately 
withdrawn from it ; and this is to be understood, whenever 
the word is used with reference to such a case. But the 
Greek word is also used where a living being is put under 
the water for the purpose of drowning, and of course is 
left to perish in the immersing element." -^^ It is of the pri- 
mary meaning of the word that Dr. Couant here speaks. 
As we have already seen, he also recognizes a secondary mean- 
ing, the importance of which he entirely ignores. As to the 
former, the admission here transcribed is conclusive, although 
obscured by ambiguous and impertinent explanations. Ko 
verb can "determine" any thing subsequent to the comple- 
tion of its own proper action. The healed paralytic, '^de- 
parted to his own house." " Paul arose and was baptized." 
"John came baptizing." He that should explain that " de- 
parted" does not of necessity imply that he never returned, 
that Paul may have sat down again ; and that for all the 
meaning of " came" John may afterward have gone away, 
would be held guilty of puerile trifling. Of course, haptizo 
determines nothing but its own action. The explanation 
of Dr. C. that the w^ord does not determine whether the 
object sinks to the bottom or is immediately taken out, is 
not trifling, because open to a more serious charge. It is 
a diligent, although undoubtedly unconscious obscuring of 
of the subject, induced by the instinctive recoil of the 
author's own mind from the picture drawn by his definition. 
He is therefore impelled to retire it into the background 
and veil its nakedness in the drapery of explanations, by 
* The Meaning and Use of Baptizein, p. 88. 



Src. LXXV.] BAPTI7.0 AXD RliSURRECTION. 349 

wliich he is as much coufounded as are his readers, — 
explanations wholly impertinent to the question in hand, 
which is the meaning of baptizo. That word, in its primary 
classic sense, as here defined, expresses a definite and com- 
pleted act. When by one continuous process a person or 
thing is put into the water and withdrawn, it is not a baptiz- 
ing, in the classic meaning, but a hapting, a dipping. It is 
true the word does not determine " whether the object im- 
mersed sinks to the bottom or floats in the liquid, or is imme- 
diately taken out," provided that by " immediately," is not 
to be understood, instantaneously, — provided that by the 
baptism, the object is deposited in the Avater and left there. 
The emersion, if it take place at all, must be a distinct and 
subsequent act, and can not be performed as a part of the 
baptizing. This, Dr. Kendrick, professor of Greek in the 
Rochester University, and a member of the American 
Committee of Revision on the New Testament, in his review 
of Dr. Dale, most emphatically concedes, with italics and 
emphasis none the less significant because of the intense 
irritation which breathes in his article. " Granting that 
bapto, always engages to take its subject from the water 
(which we do not believe), and that baptizo never does 
(which we readily admit), we have Mr. Dale's reluctant 
concession that it interposes no obstacle to his coming out." 
Baptizo "lays its subject under the water; it does not 
hold him there a single moment. Its whole function is 
fulfilled with the act of submersion. It offers no shadow 
of an obstacle to his instant emergence from his watery 
entombment. We have the utmost confidence in the kindly 
purpose of baptizo, and of Him who has made its liquid 
grave the external portal to his kingdom. Neither it nor He 
intends to drown us. We let baptizo take us into the water, 
and can trust to men's instinctive love of life, their com- 
mon sense, their power of volition and normal muscular 
action, to bring them safely out." "The law of God in 
revelation sends the Baptist down into the waters of im- 



850 THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. [Part XII. 

mersion ; when it is accomplished, the equally imperative 
law of God in nature brings him safely out." "As between 
the two \bwgiizo and 6apto], baptizo is the appropriate word, 
partly from its greater length, weight and dignity of form, 
and still more from its distinctive import. It is not a dip- 
ping that our Lord instituted, but an immersion. He did not 
command to ind people into the water and take them out again ; 
but to put them under the ivater, to submerge them, to bury 
them, symbolically, in the grave of their buried Eedeemer ; 
like him indeed, not to remain there, but with him to 
arise to newness of life. This arising, though essential to 
the completeness of the transaction, could not be included 
in the designation of the rite, any more than the rising of 
the Eedeemer could be included in the w'ords denoting his 
crucifixion and burial." " We repeat with emphasis, for 
the consideration of our Baptist brethren ; Christian bap- 
tism is no mere literal and senseless ' dipping,' assuring the 
frightened candidate of a safe exit from the water ; it is a 
symbolical immersion, in which the believer goes, in a 
sublime and solemn trust, into a figurative burial, dying to 
sin for a life with Christ ; and just as far as Mr. Dale's 
distinction holds good (which even thus far he has not 
established), baptizo, and not bapto is the only suitable 
designation of the baptismal ordinance. The early Israel- 
ites were baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 
They emerged indeed, and were intended to emerge at last. 
But it was in their wondrous march, through that long and 
fearful night, with the double wall of water rolled up on 
each side, and the column of fiery cloud stretching its 
enshrouding folds above them, — it was in this, and not in 
the closing emersion that they were baptized into their 
allegiance to their great Lawgiver and Leader."* 

Of the baptism of Israel, we shall take notice hereafter. 
In these passages, it is evident that the distinguished pro- 

* Review of Dale's Classic Baptism, in the Baptist Quarterly, 
J 869, pp. 142, 143. 



Sec. LXXV.] DAPTIZO AND RESURRECTION. 351 

fessor is as much disturbed at the apparitioo of his own 
raising as is Dr. Couaut. At first he seems determined to 
face it squarely, and calls upon his Baptist brethren to 
look and see that it is nothing dangerous. But suddenly, 
he crosses himself, and starts back in a hurried talk of the 
resurrection of Christ and the risiug of his people to new- 
ness of life; all of which is very true and precious, but, 
has no more to do with the question in hand, himself be- 
ing witness, than has the doctrine of original sin. The 
question is, the meaning of baptizo, and the professor ad- 
mits that it has no part in the resurrection. The very 
perplexing position in which he found himself, is some 
apology for the confusion of ideas and the incongruities 
which appear in his statements. He is discussing the rel- 
ative merits of the two words bapto and baptizo. The for- 
mer, in its primary and ordinary meaning, he can but 
acknowledge, engages both to put its subject into the water 
and take him out again; Avhile baptizo only puts him in. 
The latter, says the professor, was chosen because of this 
its distinctive import, because the command was, not "to 
put the people into the water and take them out again ; 
but to put them under the water, — to submerge them." 
But before he is done, we are told that the coming out, 
"though essential to the completeness of the transaction 
could not be included in the designation of the rite." 
Does "the transaction," here mean the life saving opera- 
tion which he confides to the "instinctive love of life, com- 
mon sense," etc? Or, are we correct in supposing it to 
mean that baptismal rite which he is discussing? And if 
the latter be the design, how is the statement to be recon- 
ciled with the reason just before given for the employment 
of baptizo, because it does not take the subject out of the 
water, while bapto does? Waiving this diflficulty, the ques- 
tion occurs, — Why the rising "could not be included in 
the designation of the rite," seeing bapto was ready to add 
that very idea to the meaning of baptizo^ The question 



352 THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. [Part XII. 

is anticipated by the professor, and the answer given. It 
is because- the latter word has "greater length, weight, and 
dignity of form!" The meaning of the words was a sec- 
ondary consideration! Bapto has but two syllables, while 
baptizo has three. It has the advantage, therefore, in a 
greater length, and a buzzing zeta, to add to its "weight 
and dignity of form!" Or, perhaps, the superior "weight" 
of the one word over the other consists in the fact that 
while hapto accurately expresses the hasty resurrection 
which the instinct of life and other influences specified so 
happily, though not invariably, connect with the adminis- 
tration of the rite, baptizo maintains a dignified silence on 
that part of the subject. But the professor drifts back 
again to his first position. He insists that the baptism of 
Israel into Moses Avas received in their " wondrous march" 
enclosed between the Avails of water, and enshrouded in 
the cloud, "and 7iot in the closing emersion." And yet, 
even here, his protest that bapto itself would not have 
given absolute assurance of exit, looks like a disposition to 
weaken the force of "the distinctive import" of baptizo. 

However these "dark sayings of the wise" are to be 
interpreted, the facts remain, that, confessedly, the Avord 
chosen by the Savior to designate the rite of baptism does 
not include in it the idea of emersion, typical of resurrec- 
tion, — that it Avas chosen in preference to a kindred Avord 
which does distinctly express that idea, — and that the best 
reasons suggested by Baptist scholarship for this remark- 
able fact are, that burial and not resurrection AA^as the doc- 
trine symbolized; and that baptizo sounds best! Such are 
the results of the elaborate researches of the scholarly 
Conant, confirmed by the eminent learning of Kendrick, 
divines than Avhom the Baptist churches haA'^e had none 
more zealou's or more competent. Essentially the same is 
the definition reached through the exhaustiA^e studies of 
our OAvn departed Dale. 

Thus, according to the Baptist rendering of the gospel 



Src. lxxv.] bapt/zo and resurrection. 353 

commission, we are to go into all the world and submerge 
every creature, — a command which neither contains nor 
implies authority in any one to neutralize it by a systematic 
rescue of its subjects from the "liquid grave." A result 
of the most serious import to our Baptist brethren follows 
from these facts. The definition, to dip, for the sake of 
which they have so long separated themselves, in translat- 
ing the Scriptures into the languages of the heathen, is 
demonstrably and confessedly false, and the result is a cor- 
rupting of the word of God. 

The force of these facts against the very foundations of 
the immersion fabric is utterly destructive. But the mat- 
ter does not rest even here. Dr. Conant recognizes in haptizo 
a second meaning. The word does not even limit itself to 
" submerge and nothing but submerge." It also " expressed 
the coming into a new state of hfe or experience, in which 
one was, as it were enclosed or swallowed up, so that tem- 
porarily or permanently he belonged wholly to it."* Thus, 
the man who is brought under the control of a passion of 
anger, fear, or love, or who is overcome with wine or sleep, 
was by the Greeks said to be baptized with these things. 
So, in the Scriptures, he who is under such control that he 
is "led of the Spirit," is said to be "baptized wdth the 
Spirit." This meaning of haptizo no candid scholar can 
deny ; and in it we have already seen abundant relief from 
all the perplexities of the immersion theory. Respecting 
it, however, a caution is necessary. A mere momentary 
impulse or influence by which one is seized, but, instantly, 
released, is not a baptism, in the classic sense. The word 
expressed a control which not only seizes but holds its ob- 
ject. It brings him "into a new state of life or experi- 
ence." This use of the word flows from the primary mean- 
ing, to submerge, as expressive not of comprehensive control, 
only, but of continuance. Nothing analogous to a momen- 
tary dipping was known to the Greeks as a baptism. 

* " Meaning and Use of Buptizein," p. 158. 
SO 



354 THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. [Pakt XII. 

Section LXXVI. — The Prepositions. 

In tlie common English version of the New Testament, 
the translations which occur in connection with baptism are 
such as to show an evident bias on the part of the trans- 
lators in favor of immersion. In fact they were, all of 
them, immersionists, if not by personal conviction, then, by 
constraint of law. They were members, and with a few 
exceptions clergymen of the church of England, by law 
established. That church had orginally incorporated among 
its ordinances, baptism by trine immersion. By the par- 
liamentary revision during the reign of Edward VI, the 
book of prayer was so altered as to require but one immer- 
sion. The rubric for baptism was and is to this day in 
these words : — " Then the priest shall take the child in his 
hands, and ask the name ; and naming the child, shall dip 
it in the water, so it be discreetly and warily done, saying, 
' N. , I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.' And, if the child 
be weak, it shall suffice to pour water upon it, saying the 
aforesaid words."* 

As to the bearing of the prepositions on the present ar- 
gument, a brief illustration may make it clear to the En- 
glish reader. In the following citations, the words in 
italics answer to the Greek prepositions under which re- 
spectively they are cited. 

1. En. "And were all baptized of him (e?i) in Jor- 
dan." — Matt, iii, 6. "John did baptize in the wilder- 
ness." — Mark i, 4. " John was baptizing in Enon."— John 
iii, 23. "These things were done in Bethabara, beyond 
Jordan, where John was baptizing." — John i, 28. " The 
tower in Siloam." — Luke xiii, 4. "Elias is come, and they 
have done unto him whatsoever they listed." — Matt, xvii, 

jij " The Two Books of Common Prayer," set forth by author- 
ity of Parliament, in the reign of King Edward YI, edited by Ed- 
ward Cardwell, D. D,, Principal of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford, 1852. 



Skc. lxxvi.] the prepositions. 355 

12. ** Turn the disobedient to the wisdom of the just." — 
Luke i, 17. " Lest they trample them \d€i their feet." — • 
Matt, vii, 6. " Sanctify them iJirowjli thy truth, thy word 
is truth." — John xvii, 17. "They that take the sword 
shall perish xc'xtli the sword." — Matt, xxvi, 52. *' There is 
none other name . . . hy which we must he saved." — Acts 
iv, 12. " He will judge the world , . . by that man whom 
he hath ordained." — lb. xvii, 31. *' Now revealed by the 
Spirit." — ^Eph. iii, 5. "That at the name of Jesus every 
knee should bow." — Phil, ii, 10. From these illustrations 
two deductions are manifest. (1.) Eii does not always mean 
in. It may mean icith or by, instrumentally. " WitJi the 
sword." "The name by which," etc. It may mean by a 
mediate agent. " Revealed by the Spirit." " He will judge 
the world by that man." It may mean at, by, or in, locally. 
" In Euon." " At Siloam." It may be used in a yet more 
general signification, as, "At the name." Other meanings 
might be stated, but these are sufficient. (2.) If, by reason 
of the phrase " in Jordan," we must understand that John 
immersed his disciples into the Jordan, it of necessity fol- 
lows that he also immersed them " into Enon," and " into 
the wilderness." In short, the expression indicates that 
the Jordan was the place at which the baptizing was done : — 
this, and this only. Why it was done there, we shall pres- 
ently see. 

2. Ei.i. "Jesus came from Xazareth of Galilee and 
was baptized of John (eis) in Jordan." — Mark i, 9. "They 
went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch 
and he baptized him." — Acts viii, 38. These passages mu- 
tually illustrate each other and show that the goiug into the 
water was not the baptizing. " He came and dwelt in a 
city called Nazareth." — Mat. ii, 23. "He cometh to a 
city of Samaria," but he remained outside, at the well, 
while the aj^ostles went " into the city," whence the Samar- 
itans " went out of tlie city and came to him." — John iv, 
5, 8, 28, 30. "He luved them to tlie eu.l."— lb. xiii, 1. 



356 THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. [Pakt XII. 

''1 speak to the world." lb. viii, 26. "If thy brother 
trespass agahist thee." — Matt, xviii, 15. " Therefore'' (Liter- 
ally, to this) "came I forth."— Mark i, 38. "What are 
they among so many." — Joliu vi, 9. "The Son which is 
in (on) the bosom of the Father." — John i, 18. " He went 
up into (to, or, on,) a mountain." — Matt, v, 1. "Depart unto 
the other side."— lb. viii, 18. "Fell down at his feet."— 
lb. xviii, 29. Eis is even used in express contrast with en- 
trance into. " The other disciple did outrun Peter, and first 
(elthen eis) came to the sepulchre, .... yet went he not in. 
Then cometh Simon Peter following him and (eis-elthen eis) 
entered into the sepulchre." — John xx, 4-6. This illustrates 
a usage concerning eis. When entrance into is to be ex- 
pressed by the mere force of the word, it must be doubled. 
See Matt, vi, 6 ; x, 5, 12 ; Luke ix, 34, etc. The same 
remark applies to eh, in the sense of out of. But neither 
of these words is ever used in duplicated form, with refer- 
ence to baptism. It is evident that the word of itself de- 
termines no more as to the mode of the baptism of Jesus 
than does en. The ordinary office of eis is to point to the 
terminus of a preceding verb of motion. When it is said 
that Jesus came and dwelt (eis) in a city called Kazareth, 
€71 would have been the proper preposition to express the 
in-dwelliug ; but eis is preferred because the city was the 
terminus of the coming "He came (eis) to a city." So 
Mark above uses the same word, not because of its appro- 
priateness to the baptizing, which is always elsewhere ex- 
pressed by ew, but because the Jordan was the terminus 
(eis) to which he came from Galilee. 

3. Ek. "And when they Avere come up (ek) md of the 
water." — Acts viii, 39. In his gospel, Luke the author of 
this account thus uses the preposition. " Saved from our 
enemies." — Luke i, 71. " Every tree is known by its own 
fruit, for of thorns men do not gather figs; nor o/* a bramble- 
bush gather they grapes." — lb. vi, 44. "He cometh /ro?7i 
the wedding." — lb. xii, 36. "All these have I kept /ro?M 



Sec. LXXVL] THE PREPOSITIONS. 357 

my youth up." — lb. xviii, 21. So far as this word deter- 
mines, Philip and the eunuch may have come up jrom the 
■water, without having been in it, at all. 

4. ^po. "Jesus when he was baptized, went up straight- 
way (apo) out of the water." — Matt, iii, 16. Apo never 
means, "out of," as here translated; but, "from," "away 
from." "When Jesus was come down /rom the mount- 
ain." — Matt, viii, 1. ''From whom do kings take tribute?"^— 
lb. xvii, 25. " Cast them from thee." — lb. xviii, 8. 
" Beginning /)'o??i the last unto the first." — lb. xx, 8. 

From these illustrations, which might be multiplied in- 
definitely, it is evident that the prepositions will not bear 
the stress put upon them by the Baptist argument. Not 
anly are they, in themselves, insufficient to constitute a 
reliable basis for the conclusions sought; but the statements 
to which they belong have respect, not to the mode of the 
baptism, but to the places of it. They are defined by the 
phrases, " i?i Jordan," — "m Enon," — "m Bethabara." 
Recent Baptist writers have had the courage to follow their 
principles to the result of translating John's words, — "I 
immerse you in Avater, but he shall immerse you in the 
Holy Ghost and in fire," — a rendering from which the 
better taste, if not the better scholarship, of the trans- 
lators of King James's version revolted. The thorough 
consideration already given in these pages to the baptism 
of the Spirit justifies an imperative denial of the correct- 
ness of this translation. If any thing in the Bible is clear, 
it is that the baptism administered by the Lord Jesus is 
not an immersion, but an outpouring. 

On the question of the prepositions in this connection, 
light is shed by an expression of the apostle Paul. "By 
one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, . . . and 
have been all made to drink one Spirit." — 1 Cor. xii, 13. 
Of this passage we have already indicated that "into," as 
found in the last clause, in the common version ("to 
drink into one Spirit"), is spurious, and that j)otizo (" made 



358 THE BAPTIST ARGUMRXT. [Part XII. 

to drink"), properly signifies, to a^j)hj water or otlier fluid, 
whether externally or internally, to water, to cause to 
drink. In this passage, we have both the prepositions, en 
and m, each dependent on the one verb, baptizo, but each 
having its own distinctive subject. *' Baptized (en), in 
one Spirit (eis), into one body." Into which of these 
media does the immersion take place? Shall we follow 
the Baptist interpretation of the words of John, "He shall 
immerse you in the Holy Ghost?" But in the first place, 
we have seen that this is false to the real manner of the 
baptism in question; which consists in a shedding down 
of the Spirit. In the second, how then, in harmony with 
Baptist principles, are we to understand the other clause 
of the passage, — " Immersed in one Spirit, into one body?" 
Are there here two immersions by one act? the one subject 
put at one and the same time into two different media? 
Moreover, the language with which the apostle closes the 
passage, while it is in perfect accord with the true mode 
of the baptism of the Spirit, is altogether incongruous to 
the Baptist interpretation. If we are baptized with or by 
the Spirit, shed upon us, we may consistently be said to 
drink (or, to be watered with) the Spirit. For, the earth 
and its vegetation drink the rain that falls upon them. 
But if we must be immersed in the Spirit, Paul's language 
implies that in order that men be caii^e^d to drink they are 
to be immersed in the water. "Immersed in one Spirit, 
and all made to drink one Spirit." 

But the phrase, en heni Pneumati, does not mean "in 
one Spirit." As we have seen, the preposition may and 
often does mean "icith,'' or "by" the Spirit, as the agent 
or instrument. Especially by Paul, the writer of the pas- 
sage in question, is the phrase so used, — "Through Him 
we both have access (en lieni Pneumati), by one Spirit unto 
the Father." — Eph. ii, 18. Here is the very phrase in 
question. Through the Lord Jesus, the Mediator, by his 
Spirit as the instrument, who, being sent by him helpeth 



skc. lxxvl] the prepositions. 359 

our iufirmities, in prayer (Rom. viii, 26), we have access 
to the Father's presence. Again, — "On whom," as the 
chief corner stone, "we are builded together, for an habi- 
tation of God (en Piieumati), by the Spirit," who is the 
efficient builder of the spiritual temple. Again, the apos- 
tle tells of the mystery which is "now revealed unto His 
holy apostles and prophets (en Pneiunati), by the Spirit" 
(Eph. iii, 5), and exhorts us, "Be not drunk with wine, 
wherein is excess, but be filled (en) ivith the Spirit" (lb. 
V, 18), and to "pray with all prayer and supplication (en) 
by the Spirit." — lb. vi, 18. So in the text, — ''With, or, 
by one Spirit," the instrument and agent of grace shed on 
us abundantly by Jesus Christ "are we all baptized" — 
brought into a new state of incorporation " into one body," 
which he pervades and controls as the Spirit of life. Into 
it we are not immersed ; but, united by his common in- 
dwelling power, are made daily "to drink of that one 
Spirit," which is in us, "a well of water springing up into 
everlasting life." — John iv, 14. 

It is not necessary to the present purpose to dwell 
further on the signification and bearing of the prepositions. 
The moment bapiizo ceases to mean, to dip, and nothing 
else, the prepositions lose all determining force upon the 
questions at issue. If John's disciples were dipped or sub- 
merged in Jordan all is plain, and discussion is at an end. 
But if John baptized in Jordan, the question still remains, — 
How did he baptize? This is very clearly illustrated by 
the case of the Ethiopian eunuch, if we accept the immer- 
sion rendering of the prepositions. "They went down 
both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch." They 
have now reached the place, in the water, if j^ou will. 
But the baptism is yet to be performed. — ''And he bap- 
tized him." But how did he do it? Tlie baptism is uow 
ended; but both are still in position "in the w;iter;" out 
of which they arc then stated to have come. (Acts viii, 
38, 39.) '- 



360 THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. [Part Xll- 

Section LXXVII.— "T/iere wau^ much Water tJiere." 

Appeal is made to the fact that John baptized "in 
Enon, near to Salim, because there ^vas much water 
there." — John iii, 23. Enon (Aenon), is the plural form, 
a word which means a spring or fountain. In a few places 
it is translated, a well of water. But it signifies a flowing 
spring. The name, therefore, means. The Springs near to 
Salim. All attempts to trace a town or city of that name 
have failed ; and the whole manner of John's ministry and 
statements of the evangelists indicate him to have selected 
a retired spot, rather than a town or city, as the place of 
his preaching and baptism. 

The phrase, " much water," is not a correct translation 
of the original (i^olla hudata), which means, many waters, — 
that is, many springs, or streams. The phrase occurs nine 
times in the Greek of the Old Testament, and four times 
in the New, beside the place in question. It is never used 
in the sense of unity, — *' much water," — but invariably ex- 
presses the conception of plurality. In several places, it 
designates the waves of the sea in a tumult. Thus, Psa. 
xciii, 3, 4, — "The floods have lifted up, Lord, the floods 
have lifted up their voice ; the floods hft up their waves. 
The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters; 
yea, than the mighty waves of the sea." See, also, 2 Sam. 
xxii, 17 ; Psa. xviii, 16 ; xxix, 3 ; Isa. xvii, 12, 13 ; Ezek. 
xliii, 2 ; Rev. i, 15 ; xiv, 2 ; xix, 6. In these places the 
noise of many waters, is the sound of the waves, as they 
toss in the fury of a storm, or thunder upon the shore. 
Again, it is used to designate many streams, and even the 
rivulets which for the purposes of irrigation were carried 
through vineyards and gardens. Thus, "Thy mother was 
as a vine, and as a shoot planted by a stream, by waters; 
the fruit of which, and its sprouts were from many waters." — 
Ezek. xix, 10. See, also, Num. xxiv, 7, and Jer. li, 13. 
In the last of these passages, Babylon is described as dwell- 



Skc. lxxvil] much water there. 361 

ing " upon many waters," meaning, not the Euphrates, 
only ; but the four rivers, Euphrates, Tigris, Chaboras and 
Ulai, and the many canals of irrigation, vestiges of which 
continue to this day, to whicli Babylonia was indebted for 
its fertility, and the city for its wealth and power. Com- 
pare Psalm cxxxvii, 1, "By the rivers of Babylon, there 
we sat down, yea we wept, when we remembered Zion." 
In the text of John, the phrase coincides with the name 
of Enon, to indicate that the peculiarity of the place was 
a number of flowing springs. The bearing of these upon 
the question as to the mode of John's Baptism is inappre- 
ciable ; as, for the purposes of immersion, he did not need 
more than one. 

But, we recur to the challenge, so confidently urged. 
If John did not immerse, why his resort to the Jordan, and 
to the '* much water" of Enon ? We reply by another ques- 
tion. Why did the Lord Jesus concentrate his ministry upon 
the shore of the Sea of Galilee? Why did he, after the 
close of his labors in that part of the laud, take up his 
abode at that very " place where John at first baptized ?" — 
John X, 40. A comparison of the evangelists shows that, 
as did John (Luke iii, 3), so Jesus began his ministry by 
journeying through the country and villages preaching the 
gospel. But, as his fame spread abroad and the concourse 
of his hearers increased, he was accustomed to resort to the 
shores of the Sea of Galilee and the slopes of the mountains 
which enclose it on the west. A comparison of the evan- 
gelists shows the sermon on the mount to have been uttered 
from one of those mountains. (Matt, v, 1 ; Mark iii, 7-13.) 
In the brief narrative of Mark, that sea is six times spoken 
of as the scene of his labors ; and these are evidently mere 
illustrations of the habit of his ministry. Thus, the first 
such mention states that ** he went forth a(jain by the sea 
side, and all the multitude resorted unto him and he taught 
them."— Mark ii, 13, and see iii, 7 ; iv, 1 ; v, 21 ; vi, 31-33 ; 
vii, 31 ; viii, 10. Here, he fed the five thousand men, 

31 



362 THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. [Part XII. 

beside women and children, with five barley loaves and 
two small fishes; and here, the fi3ur thousand, with seven 
barley loaves and a few small fishes. Afterward, when his 
ministry in Galilee was finished and he would preach in 
Judea, he found himself beset, before his time, by the 
machinations of the scribes and rulers. He therefore with- 
drew beyond Jordan, to " the place where John at first 
baptized, and there he abode, and many resorted to him, . . . 
and many believed on him there." — John x, 39-42, and 
Mark x, 1. It is evident that the facts here referred to were 
not casual nor fortuitous. They constitute one of the most 
prominent features of the story of our Lord's ministry. It 
is also manifest that these and the facts concerning the 
places of John's ministry belong to the same category ; so 
that no explanation can be sufficient which does not account 
for all alike. 

The Baptist theory is not thus adequate. They will not 
pretend that it was to immerse his disciples, that Jesus re- 
sorted to the lake and to Bethabara. We may, therefore, 
conclude that the explanation of John's places of baptism 
is to be sought upon some other principle. A candid con- 
sideration of the circumstances will discover it ; and cus- 
toms peculiar to this country may confirm the. solution. 
The assemblies that attended on the ministry of John and 
of Jesus were essentially similar to our camp-meetings, with 
the only difierence, that the simpler habits of the people of 
Judea and Galilee rendered any preparation of tents or 
booths unnecessary. On one occasion w^e casually learn 
that the people remained together three days (Mark viii, 
2) ; and the circumstances indicate that generally they were 
"protracted meetings." For example, at one time, Mark 
states that "Jesus withdrew himself with his disciples to 
the sea; and a great multitude from Galilee, followed him, 
and from Judea, and from Jerusalem, and from Idumea, and 
from beyond Jordan, and they about Tyre and Sidon, a great 
multitude, Avhen they had heard what great things he did, 



Sec. LXXVIL] MUCH WATER THERE. 363 

came unto him." — Mark iii, 7, 8. Luke in one place speaks 
of '* an innumerable multitude of people {ion muriadon tou 
ochlou, the tens of thousands of the throng) insomuch that 
they trode one upon another." — Luke xii, 1. See, also, the 
descriptions of John's audiences. In choosing the place for 
a camp-meeting, three things are recognized as of the first 
necessity. These are, retirement, accessibility, and abun- 
dance of water. Why these are essential, needs no explan- 
ation. As to the last, food may be brought, from a dis- 
tance ; but if abundance of water, for the supply of man 
and beast, is not found on the spot, its use for such a pur- 
pose is manifestly and utterly impracticable. 

The argument applies with double force to the thirsty 
climate of Judea. As heretofore stated, there are very few 
running streams in the land. The requisite supplies for the 
people in the towns and villages in which the population 
was concentrated were obtained from wells. There is scarcely 
a single perennial stream flowing from the west into the 
Jordan, in its whole course from the sea of Galilee to the 
Dead Sea. Its aflluents are " mere winter torrents, rush- 
ing and foaming during the continuance of rain, and quickly 
drying up after the commencement of summer. For fully 
half the year, these ' rivers,' or ' brooks,' are often dry 
lanes of hot white or gray stones ; or, tiny rills, workino- 
their way through heaps of parched boulders."-!^ In a word, 
the banks of the Jordan, the shores of the sea of Tiberias, 
and some such exceptional spots as The Springs near Salim, 
presented the only sites in Palestine in which the three 
requisites above indicated were to be found united. Sup- 
pose the multitudes that were gathered to our Savior's mm- 
istry, — four and five thousand men, beside women, children 
and cattle; and those of John's preaching were, without 
doubt, as numerous, — to have been assembled with an im- 
provident forgetfu lness of the prime necessity of water! 

*Mr. George Grove, in Smith's Bible Dictionary, article, 
" Palestine." 



364 THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. [Part XII. 

The alternative would have been a vast amount of sufter- 
ing and the dispersion of the assembly, or miraculous inter- 
position. But this does not meet the case of John's con- 
gregations ; for ' ' John did no miracle. " 

It is plain that Ave need no immersion theory, to account 
for the places chosen by John and Jesus for fulfilling their 
ministry. The necessities of their numerous audiences were 
decisive, and were in harmony with the requirement of the 
law that the sprinkled water of purifying should be living 
or running water. 

Section LXXVIII. — '* Buried with him by Baptism into 

Death." 

The principal remaining Baptist argument is derived 
from two expressions of the apostle Paul which are sup- 
posed to show by implication that baptism was adminis- 
tered by immersion. These are; — Rom. vi, 4, — "Buried 
with him by baptism into death ;" and Col. ii, 12, — "Buried 
with him in baptism." In our common English version as 
here quoted, there is a repeated neglect of the definite arti- 
cle, Avhere it occurs in the original, which obscures the 
meaning. This defect being rectified, the first passage reads 
thus: — Rom. vi, 1-11. "What shall we say then? Shall 
we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. 
How shall we that are dead by sin live any longer therein ? 
Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus 
Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore, we are 
buried with him by the baptism into the death; that like 
as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the 
Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 
For, if we have been planted together in the likeness of 
his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrec- 
tion : knowing this, that our old man (sunestaurothe') was 
crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, 
that henceforth we should not serve sin. For (ho apo- 
thanon) lie that died is freed (dedikoiatai, is justified) from 



Sec. LXXVIIL] BURIED BY BAPTISM. 365 

sin. Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we will 
also live with him. . . . For in that he died {il hamaiiia) 
by sin he died once : but in that he liveth he liveth {to 
thed) by God" (that is, " by the power of God."— 2 Cor. 
xiii, 4.) Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead 
indeed by sin, but alive by the power of God, through Je- 
sus Christ our Lord." 

In the present state of our argument, it might seem 
almost needless to discuss this passage. But this and the 
parallel text sustain relations to the subject, which clothe 
them with an importance in the discussion, such as attaches 
to no other Scriptures whatever. In them is contained 
and exhausted the entire evidence in behalf of the assump- 
tion tliat the form of baptism represents the burial of the 
Lord Jesus. Confessedly, that supposition, if not estab- 
hshed by these two phrases of Paul, is without warrant 
anywhere m the Bible. But to prove the interpretation of 
the rite, they must of necessity, first, establish its very ex- 
istence, which as yet is more than problematical. That 
they are not likely to prove adequate 'to the task thus laid 
upo» them, will be apparent to the reader upon a moment's 
consideration. It is evident, and admitted by all, that the 
immediate subject of discussion in them is the baptism of 
the Spirit, and not ritual baptism, in any form. If the 
latter is referred to, at all, it is by mere allusion. That, 
this is true, as to the text to the Komans, is indicated alike 
by the form of expression, " baptized into Jesus Christ," 
and by tlie i)henomena and results which are attributed to 
that baptism. It will hereafter appear that the two 
phrases, "baptized into Jesus Christ," and "baptized into 
the name of Christ," are those by which, in the Scriptures, 
the real baptism, and the ritual, are discriminated from 
each other. The one unites to the very body of Christ, 
the true, invisible church. The other unites to the 7iame 
of Christ, and to that visible body which is named with 
his name. That it is of spiritual phenomena, and not of 



366 THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. [Part XII. 

ritual forms, that Paul speaks, is moreover evident, from 
the purpose and teuor of his argument. His object is to 
repel the suggestion that free grace gives liberty to sin. 
His fundamental point in reply to this is, that God's peo- 
ple " are dead h\j sin," in such a sense that it is impossible 
they should "live any longer therein." To prove this, is 
the whole intent of his argument. First, in designating 
the subjects of his statements, he uses phraseology which 
emphasizes the difference between a mere outward relation 
to Christ and the church, and that which is established by 
the baptism of the spirit. " Know ye not that ^o many of 
us as were baptized into Jesus Christ." It is those who are 
truly one with Christ by a real spiritual union, and only 
those, whom he describes, and of whom he predicates what 
follows. 

"Baptized into Jesus Christ." This is the one only 
baptism of the passage, the effects and consequences of 
which the apostle proceeds to set forth. Or, are we here 
to recognize three baptisms, — into Jesus Christ, — into his 
death, — and into his* burial? The first effect of the bap- 
tism into Christ Paul indicates by the phrase, " ba^ized 
into his death." In the baptism into Christ, " by one 
Spirit are we all baptized into one body," the body of 
Christ, "and are all made to drink one Spirit." But it 
was by that Spirit that he offered himself without spot to 
God, and " died by sin," it being the meritorious cause of 
his death ; and that Spirit being in us by virtue of the 
baptism, will cause the same hatred of sin, and induce in 
us a sense of its demerit and condemnation, so that we can 
no longer live in it. Such is the meaning of the apostle's 
expression, "baptized into his death," — so united by the 
baptism into Christ, that as he died for sin to destroy it in 
us, so we will be dead to it in the same hatred and zeal 
for its destruction, inspired by the same Spirit. To inten- 
sify this conception, the apostle pursues the figure yet 
farther. — "Therefore, we are buried with him." — How? 



Sec. LXXVIII.] BURIED BY BAPTISM. 367 

By immersion in water? or, By any thing of which such 
immersion is a symbol? No. But {dia) through, or, by 
means of the baptism just spoken of; ''the baptism into 
the death " of Christ. That the expression can not possibly 
me£^n any ritual form of baptism is certain every way. 
The illative, " Therefore," forbids it. It shows the burial 
to be, not a physical phenomenon, real or ritual, but a con- 
sequence which, by virtue of the relation of cause and 
eifect, logically results from something which either pre- 
cedes or follows. But the boundaries in both directions are 
the same. — ^' Bajjtized into his death. Therefore buried with 
him, by the baptism into the death." The baptism into 
Christ, by which we are. baptized into his death, is thus 
the instrumental cause of the burial ; a fact w^hich utterly 
excludes any form of ritual baptism from the purview 
of the passage. But what is here meant by being buried 
with him? In order to an answer, it will be necessarv 
to ascertain precisely who it is that dies and is buried 
with Christ. The answer comes promptly. " We are 
buried." True ; but the words are to be taken in the 
light of the apostle's own interpretation. It is not we, in 
the entirety of our persons, but our old man, of which 
this is said. " Knowing this, that our old man is crucified 
with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that 
henceforth we should not serve sin." — Vs. 6. It is, to sig- 
nify the utterness of this death and destruction of the old 
man, — its obliteration out of our lives, so that we can not 
"live any longer therein," nor "serve sin," that the apos- 
tle represents it as buried, and hidden away in a resurrec- 
tionless grave. The old man buried, so that the. new man 
may unimpeded " walk in newness of life." In this doc- 
trine and these words of the apostle, we have the very 
baptism which Dr. Conant admits to be expressed, "by 
analogy," by the word baptizo; — " the coming into a new state 
of life or experience." Into the conception of the passage, 
when critically appreciated, it is impossible to introduce 



868 THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. [Pakt XII. 

the idea of immersion, in any congruous or intelligible re- 
lation. 

The apostle illustrates his subject with another figure, 
which has been sometimes pressed into the service of im- 
mersion. " For if we have been planted together in the 
likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his 
resurrection." It has been assumed that the planting of 
a tree is here associated with immersion in water ("buried 
by baptism"), as representing the burial of the dead. Thus, 
"the likeness of his cZeai/i," which was by crucifixion, is 
confounded with the form of hurial of the dead. This is 
recognized by Dr. Carson, whose exposition of the figure 
is essentially correct. Of siimphiitoi ("planted together") 
he says, — "It might, I think, be applied to express the 
growing together of the graft and the tree ; but this would 
be the effect or consequence of grafting, and not the opera- 
tion itself. It denotes, in short, the closest union, with 
respect to things indiscriminately. There is no need, then, 
to bring either planting or grafting into the passage; and 
as neither of them resembles a resurrection, they should 
be rejected. When we translate the passage, — 'For, if we 
have become one with him,' or, 'have been joined with 
him, in the likeness of his death,' — we not only suit the 
connexion, to both death and resurrection, but we take 
the word sumphutoi, in its most common acceptation."* 
This witness is true. The phrase has no reference to the 
form of ritual baptism, but to the intimacy of the union 
which that of the Spirit establishes. The two expres- 
sions, — "Baptized into his death," and "Coplanted with 
him in the likeness of his death," are coincident, meaning 
essentially the same thing. It is, however, a fundamental 
defect in Carson's conception, that while he earnestly insists 
on the closeness of the union, by which Christ and his peo- 
ple are one, he fails to recognize the essential fact that it 
is effected by the baptism of the Spirit. In his coucej^tion 

* Carson on Baptism, p. 251. 



Sbc. LXXVIII.] BURIED BY BAPTISM. 369 

and vocabulary, it is a ^^comtituted union." A ray of 
light entering his mind on this point would have trans- 
figured his whole system. 

But what means our being joined with Christ in the 
likeness of his death? Here and elsewhere, Paul explains 
abundantly. " He died by sin," our sin, as being the mer- 
itorious cause of his death. "He was crucified through 
weakness," — the Aveakness of his humiliation, under the 
law^ and the curse. (2 Cor. xiii, 4.) He died by the 
cross, the agonies of which he voluntarily assumed. And 
he lives again, by the power of God who raised him from 
the dead. So we also, if truly baptized into him, "are 
weak (en auto) in him, but we shall live with him by the 
power of God tow-ard us." — 2 Cor. xiii, 4. We are weak 
in him, in a realizing sense imparted by his Spirit in us, 
of the desert and condemnation of sin, and of its prevail- 
ing power, which renders our emancipation from it a cru- 
cifixion of the flesh, the agonies of which we voluntarily 
incur. And we live with him, in the present life of the 
new man after his image, created by the baptism of his 
Spirit in us, as we shall finally live with him in the life of 
glory. Thus we are joined with him in the likeness of his 
death, and also of his resurrection. 

From this analysis, it is evident that the assumption 
of allusion to a supposed ritual burial is wholly unnecessary 
to the exegesis of the passage. In fact, the supposition 
of such allusion is altogether incongruous and confusing to 
the argument of the place. (1.) The real baptism and its 
effects are the alone subjects of the discussion; and any 
exegesis w'hich ignores this must lead to error. (2.) The 
burial of which the apostle speaks is spiritual, as well as is 
the baptism. The two are in no sense identical; but the 
one is, by the apostle distinctly and sharply discriminated 
from the other. The baptism is the primary cause, of 
which the burial is one, and but one, of the results. The 
baptism is the shedding upon us of the Holy Spirit of life 



370 THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. [Pakt XII. 

in Christ Jesus. The burial is the putting away, and ob- 
literating of the old man out of our lives. It follows, 
that in any parallel figurative or ritual system, each one 
of these spiritual realities must have its own analogue, as 
distinctly defined and discriminated, each from the other, 
as are the realities which they are designed to represent. 
And, in fact, such is the figurative system of the Scrip- 
tures, which represent the one by the figure of the out- 
pouring of water, and the other by the burial of the dead. 
To interpret, therefore, a ritual baptism as symbolic of 
the spiritual burial, is as incongruous to the Scriptural 
conception, as would be the employment of the burial of 
the dead to represent the outpouring upon us of the Spirit 
of life. And to understand the apostle, by the expression, 
"buried by the baptism" to mean directly the spiritual 
phenomenon which the phrase designates, and at the same 
time to convey an allusion to a ritual baptism as being a 
symbol of the burial, is an absurdity which does violence 
to the whole conception, to the destruction of its propriety 
and significance. For, not only are the two thus sharply 
discriminated by Paul, but he attributes to each its own 
relations and predicates, and assigns to each its own place 
in the scheme of grace and in the argument which he 
states. To neglect, therefore, the distinction, and confound 
them together, as is done by the Baptist interpretation, 
destroys the whole logical force and sequence of the argu- 
ment,' and dissolves the connection between the premises 
and the conclusions. 

Moreover, were it even allowable, as it is not, thus to 
confound things that differ, there still remains a point of dif- 
ficulty in the way of the immersion exegesis which, for its 
removal, demands something more than the mere assump- 
tion which has heretofore been put in the place of proof. 
The apostle speaks, not of immersion, but of burial. 
'' Buried with him." That the two ideas are not identical 
does not need to be proved. Nor is the diflference so slight 



Sec. LXXIX.] BURIED IN BAPTISM. 371 

that the oue would readily suggest itself as a figure of the 
other. But iu order to sustain the Baptist couclusions 
which depend ou this language, it would be necessary to 
demonstrate that the rites of sepulture with w'hich the 
Avriters of the Scriptures were familiar, and in conformity 
to which the body of Jesus was entombed, bore a resem- 
blance to immersion iu water, so close and manifest, that 
the one was a recognized symbol of the other. But there 
is certainly no such resemblance as to justify the gratuitous 
assumption that such a figure w^as employed ; and of its 
actual use, the Scriptures contain not a trace. 

Is it still insisted that, nevertheless, there is an allusion 
to the rite of immersion ? Such an allusion must be sup- 
posed to shed light or beauty upon the presentation of the 
spiritual theme of the passage ; or, it is an arbitrary im- 
pertinence. Let us then view the suggestion squarely, in 
the light of the realized observance, thus forced into criti- 
cal notice. The theme of the apostle is the calm majesty 
and power of the Savior's three days' rest in the sepulcher, 
and of the silent and unseen mystery of his rising on the 
third day ; and the tranquil energy of the same mighty 
power in the believer (Ej^h. i, 19, 20; ii, 1), by which he 
is quickened and raised up to the life of holiness. The fig- 
ure which is intruded, to illuminate and adorn this con- 
ception, calls up before us the apprehension and haste of 
the ritual observance, and the agitation, the gasping and 
sputter of the dripping subjects of the rite, as they struggle 
up out of the " watery grave." Is it possible to conceive that 
master of rhetoric, the apostle Paul, to have called up 
these, the essential and inseparable features of the rite of 
immersion, as a means of shedding light or beauty on his 
exalted theme? 

Section LXXIX. — ^'Buried iviiJi Him in Baptism." 

Col. ii, 9-13.—" In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the 
Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is 



372 THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. [Paut XII. 

the head of all principality and power. In whom, also, ye 
are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, 
in putting oif the body of the flesh by the circumcision of 
Christ (suntaphentes auto en to baptismati), having been buried 
with him by the baptism, wherein also ye were raised up 
with him, through the faith of the operation of God, who 
raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your 
sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, did he quicken 
together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses." 
Here, in the phrase, — " the body of the sins of the fl.esh," 
which is the reading of the common version, the critical 
editors unite in rejecting (Jiamartion) "of the sins," which 
was undoubtedly a gloss inserted from the margin, in care- 
less transcription. 

It is evident that the doctrine and argument of the 
passage just examined from the epistle to the Romans, and 
this to the Colossians are essentially the same. In the 
former, Paul shows that the child of God can not live in 
sin ; — in the latter that he ought to walk in Christ. The 
controlling motive of the apostle's argument, here, is, to 
free>his readers from the bondage of ritual ordinances and 
human devices of religion. He begins with the admoni- 
tion, — " Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy 
and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudi- 
ments of the world, and not after Christ." — vs. 8. To ' 
this, he again recurs as the conclusion of his argument. — 
"Therefore, if ye be dead with Christ, from the rudiments 
of the world, why as though living in the world are ye 
subject to ordinances, . . . after the commandments and 
doctrines of men?" — vs. 20, 21. It is with a view to these 
things that the exhortation is written, — "As ye have re- 
ceived Christ Jesus the Lord, so, walk ye in him, rooted 
and built up in Am, and established in the faith" as con- 
trasted with these traditions of men. Thus, as in the 
parallel plea to the Romans, s>) here, the determining idea 
is union with the Lord Jesus, — that spiritual union of 



Sec. LXXIX.] BURIED IN BAPTISM. 373 

-which the baptism of the Spirit is the efficient and only 
cause. The dignity and glory conferred by it are empha- 
sized by the declaration that " in Him dwelleth all, 
{pleroma) the fullness of the Godhead bodily." In the per- 
son of Jesus, the Son is incarnate ; the Father's glory and 
power invest him, and the Spirit is his and dwells in him. 
"And ye are (pepleromenoi) made fall in him." "Made 
full in him " by virtue of that mutual relation which Jesus 
describes; — " You in me, and I in you." — John xiv, 20. 
Thus, made full, with all the graces of his indwelling 
Spirit, and so needing no recourse to the rudiments of the 
world. With this fullness of grace, the apostle then con- 
trasts the coincident emptying of the old man. "In whom 
ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without 
hands, in putting off the body of the flesh, by the circum- 
cision of Christ." Circumcision signified the cutting off 
and destruction of the corrupt nature derived by genera- 
tion, the old man, through the blood and sufferings of the 
promised Seed of Abraham. This operation is here called 
" the circumcision of Christ," as it is that spiritual reality 
of which ritual circumcision was the type. The apostle 
holds it up to view, as the substance, in contrast with the 
emptiness of the ritual shadow, against dependence ou 
which he dissuades his Colossian readers. This circum- 
cision of Christ he proceeds to explain farther. " Putting 
off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 
(suntaphentes auto) having been buried with him in the bap- 
tism." In the conception and argument of the apostle, 
emphasis rests on the definite article, which here, and in 
the parallel place, already examined, is ignored in the com- 
mon English version, and in the Revised version. Paul's 
aim in this place is to hold up the spiritual realities of the 
gospel in contrast witli the emptiness of ritual forms. He 
coordinates ''the baptism" with "the circumcision of 
Christ," in producing the spiritual phenomena of which he 
is speaking. Or, rather, he postulates the baptism as the 



374 THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. [Part XII. 

ultimate cause of the circumcision and its results. That, 
by the phrase, " the baptism," he designates the same 
thing as in Romans vi, 4, is evident, as it is also that as 
in that place, so here, the baptism is not the burial, but 
is related to it, as the cause to the effect. — "Buried with 
him hxj the baptism." How the baptism effects the burial, 
has been shown in that place. The distinction between 
the two, which is there so strongly marked, is in this pass- 
age equally clear and important; and the consequences 
there traced are here as legitimate and pertinent. The 
supposition of an allusion to immersion in water, in either 
place, is utterly groundless, and in both alike incongruous 
and destructive to the apostle's conception and argument. 
Certainly, this place no more than the other necessitates 
recourse to the supposed rite of immersion, in order to a 
rational interpretation. And it is equally certain that at 
the touch of a discriminating exegesis the supposed allusion 
to such a rite vanishes utterly away. 

Section LXXX. — End of the Baptist Argument. 

The Baptist position rests on two assumptions. The 
first is, that baptizo means, to dip, to immerse, to sub- 
merge, — one or other of these, as the different advocates 
of the cause may select, — aiid nothing else. The second is, 
that on account of its resemblance to the laying of the 
body of Jesus in the sepulchre, the rite of dipping, immer- 
sion, or submersion in water was appointed as a symbol of 
his entombing. The first of these assumptions is essential 
to vindicate the mode in question, and the second to estab- 
lish its typical significance. If baptizo does not mean as 
defined, or if that is not the only meaning, the whole im- 
mersion fabric falls to the ground. And if the second 
proposition is not established, the rite becomes an unmean- 
ing absurdity. — On these vital points, the following are the 
results of the evidence thus far developed in these pages. 

1. While the Scriptures everywhere, in the Old Testa- 



Sec. LXXX.] EXD OF THE ARGUMENT. 375 

meDt and the New, are full of the doctrine of the baptism 
of the Spirit, — while the divers baptisms of the Mosaic rit- 
ual were unquestionably typical of it, and the prophecies 
al)ound in references to it under the figure of affusion — 
the sprinkling of water, and the outpouring of rain, — the 
rite of immersion does not pretend to any better evidence 
than is found in a definition of baptizo, which is now ad- 
mitted to be erroneous, and a few expressions in the New 
Testament which are at best of questionable interpretation. 
Aside from these, it is foreign and uncongenial to the whole 
tenor of conception and language of the New Testament as 
well as of the Old. 

2. Not to insist on the special conclusions of Dale, — the 
admissions of Dr. Conant, confirmed by the authority of 
Prof. Keudrick, prove that the word does n.ot mean, to dip, 
to put in the water and take out again ; but to put under 
the water, to submerge. The rite, then, consists in sub- 
merging the subjects. In that action the baptism is com- 
pleted. There is therefore in it no symbol nor suggestion 
of the resurrection. 

3. The elaborate researches of Dr. Dale, and the re- 
sults established by the investigations of this volume, are 
confirmed by the distinct admission of Dr. Conant, that the 
primary is not the only meaning of the word. It not only 
means, to submerge, but also, ''the coming into a new 
state of life or experience." Thus, the citadel of the im- 
mersion position is definitely abandoned. The word is not 
limited to one meaning. The mere fact, therefore, that it 
occurs, in any given place, decides nothing as to the form 
of action expressed by it ; since the question always arises, — 
In what sense is the word here used? a question which, in 
every instance, must be decided by evidence outside the 
word. Until so decided, any inference from the word is 
mere assumption. 

4. To re-establish the crumbling structure of immer- 
sion, the prepositions avail nothing; since they are as con- 



376 THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT. [Part XII. 

gruous to the supposition that the rite was performed 
by afFusion. 

5. The many waters of Enon prove nothiug to the pur- 
pose ; since abundance of water was necessary to John's 
congregations, had he made no ritual use of it whatever. 

6. Equally futile is appeal to Paul's " buried by the bap- 
tism," as the imagined allusion is unnecessary to the inter- 
pretation, incongruous to the argument, and destructive of 
the distinctions which the apostle draws, and the conclu- 
sions which he deduces. 

7. As to the remaining argument, from the baptism of 
the eunuch, we shall see hereafter, that while the facts re- 
corded decide nothing, they create a presumption which dis- 
tinctly indicates afFusion. 

Thus, the rite in question, — foreign to the whole style 
of the Old Testament, its ritual and prophecies^and equally 
so to the language and doctrines of the New, — is left with- 
out a vestige of evidence, anywhere, Avhether as to mode 
or meaning, even in those particular words and passages 
which have been the reliance of its advocates. 



Skc. LXXXL] CONTRARY TO THE GOSPEL. 377 



Part XIII. 

BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. 

Section LXXXI. — J7ie Doctrine is Contrary to the Whole 
Tenor of tJie Gospel 

PAUL was yet in the meridian of his strength, and the 
most active period of his ministry, when he wrote to 
the Thessalonians that "the mystery of iniquity doth 
already work," — the mystery out of which was to be de- 
veloped " that Wicked, whom the Lord shall consume with 
the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy Avith the bright- 
ness of his coming/' — 2 Thes. ii, 7, 8. There is nothing 
more remarkable, nor more humiliating, in the history of 
the church than the rapid defection from the simplicity of 
the gospel which is apjmrent in the early remains of patristic 
literature. The transition from the apostles and evangelists 
in the New Testament, to the writings of the fathers, is 
like that from the splendor of the noonday sun to the 
deepening twilight of the evening. It was the precursor 
of " the black and dark night," by which the gospel was 
obscured for so many ages, and which still enshrouds the 
churches of Rome and the East in a mantle of gloom. 
Of this defection, the all-powerful cause was a false and 
mischievous interpretation of the Scriptures concerning the 
relation of the covenant of Sinai to the new covenant. 
They were interpreted as teaching that the visible church 
and its ordinances under the New Testament economy, was 
the antitype of the Levitical church and institutions, — that 
the ritos and ceremonies of the latter wore the shadow, of 
which the ordinances of the Christian church are the sub- 
stance. Hence the Christian ministry became a prfesthood. 



378 BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. [Paut XIII. 

miDistering better sacrifices and more effectual purifyings than 
those of the Mosaic ritual; for in their hands and by virtue of 
their consecrating prayers, the Lord's supper became a pro- 
jDitiatory sacrifice of the very body and blood of the Lord 
Jesils, and baptism administered by them became a spiritual 
regeneration, — a purging of the conscience, — the true bap- 
tism foreshadowed by the " type baptism" of the Old Testa- 
ment. Thus, Didymus Alexandriuus, having quoted Ezek. 
xxxvi, 22, — " I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye 
shall be clean from all your sins ;" and Psa. li, 7, — " Sprinkle 
me with hyssop, and I shall be clean ; wash me, and I 
shall be Avhiter than snow;" says, — "For the sprinkling 
with hyssop was Judaic purification ; which is continued 
by them to the present time ; but ' whiter than snow,' de- 
notes Christian illumination, which is baptism. And Peter, 
that he may show in his first epistle, that if baptism, which 
was formerly, in shadow (en shia) saved, much more that 
which was in reality (en aletheia) immortalizes and deifies 
us, wrote thus; — 'Antitype baptism now saves us.'"^ So 
Ambrose, as already quoted, says of the Psalmist, — "He 
asks to be cleansed by hyssop, according to the law. He 
desires to be washed, according to the gospel. He who 
would be cleansed by typical baptism was sprinkled with 
the blood of a lamb, by means of a bunch of hyssop." Of 
the doctrine of baptism, as thus conceived, Tertullian says, — 
"All waters in virtue of the pristine privilege of their 
origin, t do, after invocation of God accomplish sanctifica- 
tion ; for the Spirit immediately comes from heaven and 
rests upon the waters, sanctifying them by his own power ; 
and they being thus sanctified, therewith acquire the power 
of sanctifying." X Derived from this is the modern doctrine 
of baptismal regeneration, according to which, it is onlv in 

*Did. Alex, xxxix, 716. In Dale's Christ. Bapt. p. 3-^2. 
tHe alhides to a relation to the Spirit, supposed to be in- 
dicated in Gen. i, 2. 

t Tertullianus, De Bapt., eh. iv. 



Sec. LXXXI.] CONTRARY TO THE GOSPEL. 379 

and through the baptism of water that the renewing grace 
of the Spirit is imparted to men. 

It is manifest that if this doctrine be true, baptism is 
the "one thing needful;" and the church of Rome, and 
ritualists everywhere are right in the unanimity with which 
they reduce the preaching of the word to a secondary 
place, and count the progress of the gospel by the numbers 
who have been subjected to the life-giving rite. If it be 
true, then water baptism should be the theme of the New 
Testament; and the apostles and Christian ministry must 
have been commissioned and sent forth, not to preach the 
gospel; but to baptize. What says the Word of God on 
these points? 

1. As to the gospel commission, and the instructions 
connected therewith, we have accounts from each of the 
four evangelists. John confines himself almost entirely to 
those, of such supreme interest, which Jesus uttered at the 
table, the night of the betrayal. Matthew, Mark, and 
Luke record the essential facts which occurred after the res- 
urrection. The first thing that presents itself in examining 
these accounts is, that of baptism, as connected with the last 
instructions given the apostles, neither Luke nor John say 
one word. Thus, if the doctrine in question be true, these 
two evangelists are guilty of leaving out of their record 
the very heart and essence of the whole matter. This is 
the more remarkable, if we consider the character of the 
"writers who are thus chargeable. Did we forget the Spirit 
which guided their pens, it is yet impossible to imagine 
that Luke, *'the beloved physician," disciple, and com- 
panicm of Paul, can have been unaware of the just pro- 
portion to be preserved in his narrative; so as to ignore a 
matter important as this. Or, John, the kinsman of Jesus, 
the beloved disciple, Avho in the privilege of a perfect con- 
fidence and love, lay on his bosom, and who received from 
the cross the Ici^acy of the stricken mother, — John was 
not ignorant of the mind of his Master, on a subject like 



380 BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. [Part XIII. 

tins, upon T\'liicli depend the whole results of the work of 
redemption. The silence of these writers was not inad- 
vertent, and it is fatal to the theory in question. What 
they do not report can have no place among the essentials 
of the plan of salvation. It still, however, remains to 
account for their silence respecting the ritual ordinance of 
baptism; which, apart from the unwarranted theory in 
question, all agree to be of divine authority. To this 
point we will return hereafter. 

If, now, we turn to the other evangelists, the record 
of Matthew is as follows: Matt, xxviii, 16-20. ''Then 
the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mount- 
ain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they 
saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And 
Jesus came and spake unto them, sayiug. All power is 
given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, 
and teach all nations, baptizing them (eh to Jionoina^, into 
the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy 
Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
have commanded you: and lo! I am with you alway even 
unto the end of the world." Here, it can not be pretended 
that there is auy thing to countenance the idea of baptis- 
mal regeneration. The admiaistering of the rite is eujoined 
on the apostles. But no hint is given of its being neces- 
sary to salvation ; and no such stress is laid upon it as to 
imply such necessity. 

Mark records the language of Jesus on another occa- 
sion. Mark xvi, 14-16,— "He appeared to the eleven, as 
they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief 
and hardness of heart, because they believed not them 
which had seen him after he was risen. And he said unto 
them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to 
every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall 
be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." 
Here, is no more of baptismal regeneration than we have 
found in Matthew. Emphasis is, indeed, given to baptism, 



Sec. LXXXI.] CONTRARY TO THE GOSPEL, 381 

by the connection in which it is introduced. But at the 
very point on which all depends the evidence gives way. 
"He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but 
he that believeth not — shall be damned." Thus explicitly 
Jesus utters sentence of perdition against unbelief. But 
he as explicitly omits baptism from mention on that side 
of the alternative, and thus expressly limits the condem- 
ning sentence to unbelief. Either this language is designed 
to represent baptism as important but not essential ; or, it 
is a snare which must take men at unawares, and involve 
them in danger of destruction from ignorance of the neces- 
sity of the rite. Here then is no baptismal regeneration. 
The same inference follows from the silence of the other 
evangelists on this point. The eleven were all present and 
heard these words. If they were meant to imply baptis- 
mal regeneration, they were of the very highest moment. 
They could not, therefore, be ignored, but must have been 
the very center and controlling principle of all their writ- 
ings and teachings. And yet, the other gospels ignore 
them ; and the epistles are equally silent. It is, therefore, 
certain that the apostles did not understand the expres- 
sions, in the supposed sense. The true principle of har- 
mony for the interpretation of all these facts will be pre- 
sented in another place. 

2. If now we examine the position of the great apostle 
of the Gentiles, we shall find him give place by subjection 
to this doctrine, — no, not for an hour. His is an inde- 
pendent testimony ; for he was not with the eleven under 
the personal ministry of Christ. It is also fuller than any 
other; running through his thirteen epistles. First, we 
find that it was not his habit to baptize the converts of his 
own ministry; and that, upon principle. He says to the 
Corinthians, — "I thank God that I baptized none of you 
but Crispus and Gains; lest any should say that I had 
baptized in my own name. And I baptized also the house- 
hold of Stephanas. Besides, I know not whether I bap- 



382 BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. [Paut XIII. 

tized any other. For Christ sent me, not to baptize, but 
to preach the gospel." — 1 Cor. i, 14-17. He moreover 
states the reason of his special devotion thus to the preaching 
of the gospel, — because "it pleased God by the foolishness 
of preaching to save them that believe.''^ — v. 21. Here be 
it observed, the apostle speaks of preaching, not abstractly 
considered, but in immediate contrast with baptism. He 
does not baptize ; but preaches, because preaching is the 
means which God has chosen for the salvation of men 
through faith. Thus, baptism is, in the plainest terms de- 
nied the place assigned it by the theory in question. But 
the evidence is even more direct and conclusive. To these 
same Corinthians whom Paul thus reminded that he had 
not baptized them, he addressed a second epistle, in which 
he distinctly asserts that through his personal ministry the 
Spirit of God had been given them and new life wrought 
within them. " Ye are our epistle written in your hearts,* 
known and read of all men ; forasmuch as ye are mani- 
festly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, 
written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; 
not in tables of stone, btit in the fleshly tables of the 
heart." He goes on to assert his ministry to be "of the 
new covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit; for 
the letter killeth ; but the spirit giveth life." — 2 Cor. iii, 2, 
3, 6. It needs no words, here, to show that thus the 
apostle overturns the very foundations of the theory of bap- 
tismal regeneration. Paul did not baptize the Corinthians. 
But he ministered to them the Holy Spirit of life and 
grace, — the true baptism of which he speaks so largely in 
his epistles. 

It is not necessary to go farther in tracing the doctrine 
of Paul on the subject. He is everywhere consistent with 



* That muov^ the reading of the Textus Receptiis, should be 
viiuv, ^'^ your hearts," is testified by a number of MSS., among 
which is the Sinaiticus, and is imperatively demanded by the 
connection. 



Sec. LXXXL] CONTRARY TO THE GOSPEL. 383 

liiinself as thus presented. It is however worthy of ex- 
jjress uotice that in his three epistles to Timothy and Tit4js, 
iu wdiich he sets forth the quahfications and duties of ''the 
man of God," he does not once name or allude to the ordi- 
nance of baptism. Had the apostle believed the doctrine 
of baptismal regeneration, it is not possible that he could 
have beeu thus silent. But what need is there of thus in- 
ferring the sentiments of Paul ? His favorite doctrine, ex- 
cludes and condemns this theory as an intrusive heresy. 
*' Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through 
our Lord Jesus Christ." — Rom. v, 1. "By grace ye are 
saved, tli7vugh faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the 
gift of God." — Eph. ii, 8. " O foolish Galatians, who hath 
bewitched you? . . . This only would I learn of you, Re- 
ceived ye the Spirit by the works of the law or by the 
hearing of faith f" — Gal. iii, 1, 2. How is it that by no ac- 
cident does he ever say, — " by the hearing of faith, and 
by baptismT' It is almost needless to add that the other 
apostles in their writings are iu perfect accord with Paul. 
In fact, ritual or water baptism is not once named in their 
epistles. The word, itself, occurs in them all only once, — 
in the statement of Peter respecting " antitype baptism," 
which has been already examined. If the apostles and evan- 
gelists are true witnesses as to the mind of Christ, the doc- 
trine of baptismal regeneration is contrary to his teachings 
and subversive of the gospel. 

This heresy is to be regarded with peculiar detestation 
and abhorrence because of the disparagement which it does 
to the sovereignty and glory of Christ's baptizing scepter. 
In any and every form of it, it divides the work of grace 
between Christ and the human administrators of the empty 
sign. It subordinates and limits the sovereign exercise of 
his saving power to the discretion of their wisdom and will, 
to the measure of their fidelity and ardor of their zeal. 
Whom they baptize, — upon them his grace may be be- 
stowed, and upon them only. 



384 BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. [Part XI IL 

We shall not examine in detail all the Scriptures which 
are appealed to in support of this theory. There are two 
which are the chief reliance of its advocates, an examina- 
tion of which will be sufficient. If not in them, the doc- 
trine is not to be found in the Bible. They are, John iii, 
5, and Eph. v, 25-27. 

Section LXXXII. — "Born of Water and of the Spirit." 

Said Jesus to Nicodemus, — "Except a man be born of 
* water and of the Spirit, he can not enter into the kingdom 
of God."— John iii, 5. Dr. Pusey asserts that "The 
Christian church uniformly for fifteen centuries interpreted 
these words of baptism ; on the ground of this text alone, 
they urged the necessity of baptism ; upon it they identified 
regeneration with baptism." If the position thus maintained 
by the churches of Rome and the east for so many centuries 
be the truth, it presents the Savior, the apostles and evan- 
gelists, and the Scriptures written by them, in a most ex- 
traordinary light. In the very beginning of his ministry, 
in a private interview with the Jewish ruler, Jesus imparts 
to him this doctrine, on which confessedly the salvation 
of every man depends. But, from that hour, neither he 
nor his apostles ever name it. In his public instructions 
to the people, — in his private interviews with his disci- 
ples, — in those particular and assiduous teachings by which, 
as his own ministry drew to a close, he put them in pos- 
session of his whole mind concerning their ministry and the 
world's salvation (John xv, 15), he is persistently and 
entirely silent on this vital point. " Still," says Dr. Pusey, 
"the truth in holy Scripture is not less God's truth, be- 
cause contained in one passage only." The principle is 
sound ; but its application here is a mere begging of the 
question. That question is. What mean these words? 
And the above axiom is no more true, and much less per- 
tinent to the present occasion than is the rule of interpreta- 
tion laid down by Paul. " Having then gifts differing 



Sec. LXXXIL] DORN OF WATER AND OF THE SPIRIT. 385 

according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, 
let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith." — 
Rom. xii, 6. An interpretation which takes a passage out 
of all congruous relation to the rest of the Scriptures, and 
overturns, the very foundations of the faith therein set 
forth, is false. And such is the inj:erpretation in question. 
The circumstances and connection indicate the true mean- 
ing of the passage. 

That Nicoderaus, although perhaps lacking in courage, 
was an honest inquirer after the truth, is evinced by the cir- 
cumstances of this interview and by his subsequent history. 
He came by night, for fear of the Jews. He came not to 
cavil but to be taught, as apj^ears alike from his own 
language and the manner of Christ's dealing with him. 
John had been for some time causing the land to ring with 
his warning cry ; and men's hearts were in expectation be- 
cause of it and his baptism. After this intervicAV of Mco- 
demus with Jesus, we incidentally learn that in connection 
w^ith Christ's preaching his disciples also baptized. And 
their baptism was assuredly of the same intent as that of 
John, — to prefigure the office of the Baptizer with the Holy 
Ghost. We may, therefore, conclude that their baptism 
was from the beginning associated witli Christ's ministry. 
Of these facts, a man of the rank and intelligence of Nico- 
demus, and in his state of mind, could not be ignorant. 
He therefore comes for instruction as to the way of salva- 
tion. At the beginning of the interview, he places himself 
definitely at the feet of Jesus, as a disciple to be taught of 
him. '' Rabbi, we hnoio that thou art a teacher come from 
God ; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest 
except God be with him." To an application thus so pre- 
cisely in accord with Christ's own testimonies as to himself 
and his miracles (John v, 36; x, 25; xiv, 10, 11), he 
responds by entering directly upon the question which was 
agitating the ruler's heart, — that great question, — How to 
be saved? ''Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, 

33 



386 BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. [Part XIII. 

verily, I say UDto thee, Except a man be born again, he 
can not see the kingdom of God," — that kingdom of which 
the cry then was, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." 
The figure of the new birth was strange to Nicodemus ; for, 
while the doctrine of renewing by the Holy Spirit is familiar 
to the Old Testament writers, — the figure of a new birth is 
not found in them. He therefore asks, — " How can a man 
be born when he is old?" Here evidently the ruler views 
the matter as of practical and present interest to him per- 
sonally. " How can I, Nicodemus, at my age, be born 
again?" The purpose of Jesus, in using this new illustra- 
tion was thus accomplished. Old truths in new forms 
often develop a power which otherwise they lack. Jesus 
therefore, now answers, by a figure, familiar to his hearer, 
in the Old Testament Scriptures, and in the baptisms of 
John and of Christ's disciples, " Except a man be born of 
water and of the Spirit, he can not enter into the kingdom 
of God." 

From this view of the connection and circumstances, it 
is evident that the passage is to be interpreted in the light 
of the Old Testament, and of the baptisms administered at 
the time of this interview, several years before the ascen- 
sion and day of Pentecost ; and not by any thing peculiar 
to the time subsequent to that event. But it is an essen- 
tial feature of the theory of baptismal regeneration, that it 
holds the New Testament church to have this eminent ad- 
vantage over that of the Old Testament, that the grace of 
regeneration is peculiar to the former, and to the ordinance 
of baptism as administered subsequent to the ascension of 
Christ. But the words of Christ to Nicodemus were no 
abstract setting forth of phenomena of grace to be enjoyed 
by the church in a coming time, but an explanation of the 
way in which the ruler must be saved, then and there, 
under the old economy. Viewing it in this hght the follow- 
ing are the facts essential to the exposition of the passage. 

1. The figure ot metaphor was especially congenial to 



Sec. LXXXIL] BORN OF WATER AND OF THE SPIRIT. 387 

the Hebrew mind. To its abundant use, the Scriptures are 
largely indebted for the energy and clearness with which 
the profoundest thoughts are there presented. " Lord, 
thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations." — Ps. 
xc, 1. " Moab is my ivash pot." — Ps. Ix, 8. "In the 
hand of the Lord, there is a cup, and the wine is red ; it 
is full of mixture ; and he poureth out of the same ; but 
the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring 
them out and drink them." — Ps. Ixxv, 8. "Unto you 
that fear my name shall tJie sun of righteousness arise with 
healing in his wings." — Mai. iv, 2. Who would imagine 
the necessity of pausing to explain that these expressions 
are not to be understood literally? 

2. Among these metaphors, no one was more familiar 
to the Jews than that of water, signifying the Holy Spirit. 
" I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon 
the dry ground. I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed and 
my blessing upon thine offspring." — Isa. xliv, 3. This fig- 
ure has been already illustrated abundantly in these pages. 
It is only here important to emphasize the fact that upon 
it the whole significance of John's and the Old Testament 
baptisms depended, — which were, at that precise time, so 
earnestly pressed upon the attention of the Jews. 

3. This very figure was repeatedly used by our Saviour 
in the course of his ministry. To the woman of Samaria 
he says, " thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would 
have given thee living water. . . . Whosoever drinketh of 
tJw water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the 
water that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water 
springing up into everlasting life." — John iv, 10, 14. 
Again, " In the last day, that great day of the feast, 
Jesus stood and cried, saying. If any man thirst, let him 
come unto mc and drink. He that belicvcth on me, as 
the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers 
of living water." — lb. vii, 37, 38. It is, moreover, to be 
remarked that both of these places occur in the same gos- 



388 BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. [Part XIK. 

pel of John in which is found the interview with Nico- 
demus. Nor is it without significant bearing on the present 
point, that in the Revelation, by the pen of this same 
writer, the metaphor of water is conspicuous, in this same 
sense. " The Lamb . . . shall lead them unto living fount- 
aius of waters." — Rev. vii, 17. The Lord Jesus says, — 
"I will give to him that is athirst of the fountain of the 
water of life freely;" — lb. xxi, 6. John sees the "pure 
river of water of life clear as crystal proceeding out of the 
throne of God and the Lamb ;" — lb. xxii, 1. And the 
volume of revelation closes with the invitation, — " Let him 
that is athirst come, and whosoever will, let him take of 
the water of life, freely."— lb. 17. 

4. The Greek conjunction, ]za%^ ("and,") does not al- 
ways express addition ; but sometimes indicates an ex- 
pository relation between two members of a sentence, 
and is equivalent to, even, to wit, namely. Thus, — "For 
blasphemy, even because that thou being a man makest 
thyself God." — John x, 33. " Hath made us kings and 
priests unto God, even his Father." — Rev. i, 6. "A golden 
cup, full of abominations, even the filthiness of her forni- 
cations." — lb. xvii, 4. "But ourselves, ewTi we ourselves, 
groan." — Rom. viii, 23. " God, even our Father." — ^Phil. 
iv, 20. Three of these examples being from the writings 
of John again illustrate his style. It is evident that the 
phrase in question may be translated thus; — "Except a 
man be born of water, even of the Spirit." In fact, such 
must have been the sense in which it was understood by 
Nicodemus. (1.') The phrase is professedly explanatory. 
It is in reply to the perplexity of Nicodemus, at the 
primary statement of Jesus, — "Except a man be born 
again," — an expression the meaning of which is abundantly 
illustrated, in all parts of the New Testament. (2.) The 
explanatory clause thus introduced, having performed its 
office, immediately drops out of the discourse, which sub- 
sequently dwells upon the new birth of the Spirit alone. 



Sec. LXXXIL] BORN OF WATER AND OF THE SPIRIT. 389 

** Except a man be boru of water, even of the Spirit, be 
can not enter into the kingdom of God. That which is 
born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born o/" the 
Spirit is spirit. The wind bloweth where it listeth, ... so 
is every one that is born of the Spirit.'" It is impossible to 
account for the manner in which, after the one explanatory- 
phrase, the water is thus ignored and excluded, upon any- 
other supposition than that by which it is viewed as an 
interpretation of the previous expression, a metaphor for 
the Spirit. (3.) The fact that in the circumstances, it was 
impossible for the ruler to have understood the language 
in question as referring to a water baptism, which, upon 
the theory of baptismal regeneration, was not to be admin- 
istered until after the day of Pentecost; and that he was 
therefore shut up to -regard it as a metaphor, rendered ex- 
planation necessary, if that theory is true. The absence 
of any explanation makes it certain that such was not the 
meaning of Jesus. 

5. The author of this narrative had, already, in the 
beginning of his gospel given an account of the manner 
of regeneration, which must be accepted as governing the 
whole of his subsequent record on the subject. "As many 
as received Him to them gave He power to become" 
{exousian genesthai, " gave He the prerogative of being ") " the 
sons of God, even to them that believe on His name; 
which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, 
nor of the will of man, but of God." — John i, 12, 13. 
Here, it is not suflicieut to say that baptismal regeneration 
is ignored. It is absolutely excluded. The born of God 
are described in terms both exclusive and inclusive, by the 
phrase, ^'As many as received him, . . . that believed on his 
name." These, all of these, and none but these, were born 
of. God. The addition of baptism makes this no more 
sure; nor does its absence affect the result. As many as 
receive Christ, — As many as believe on his name, to them 
it is given to be the sons of God. 



390 BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. [Paut XIII. 

It is evident that the record of the interview with 
Nicodemus, all of which may be read in two or three min- 
utes, is a mere abstract of leading points of our Savior's 
discourse. The intent of the words in question may be 
thus expressed. " You do not understand how a man can 
be born again. But you are familiar with the rite of bai> 
tism, and you are acquainted with the Scriptures of the 
prophets, and the interpretation which they give to that 
rite as a symbol of the renewing work of the Holy Spirit. 
It is that of which I speak. Except a man be born of 
water, even of the Holy Spirit, who is the true water of 
life, he can not enter into the kingdom of God." 

Section LXXXIII.— ''27ie Washing of Water by the W<yrd" 

To the Ephesians, Paul thus writes. Eph. v, 25-27. 
*' Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the 
church and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify 
and cleanse it Avith the washing of water by the word ; 
that he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not 
having spot, or wrinkle, or auy such thing ; but that it 
should be holy and without blemish." It is asserted that 
here baptism with water, and its effects are described. 
The "washing of water" is the baptism, "the word," is 
the formula of the ordinance and unblemished holiness, 
the effect. But 

1. The subject of Paul's discussion is the relation of 
husband and wife, and the reference to the church is inci- 
dental, and by reason of the analogy of the subjects. The 
conception which runs through and controls the passage is 
that of a bridal, and each particular of the language is 
suggested by this conception. Thus, in the phrase, "a 
glorious church," rather "a church gloriously adorned" 
(compare Luke vii, 25, "gorgeously apparelled,") the apos- 
tle seems to have had in his mind (Psa. xlv, 3), — "The 
king's daughter is all glorious, within ; her clothing is of 
wrought gold." So, the washing of water is expressly 



Src. lxxxiii.] washing of water by the word. 391 

stated to be in order to liis preseutiug lier to himself "not 
having- spot or wrinkle." Tiie immediate reference, there- 
fore, of the laugnage is to the washing and decking of the 
bride, before marriage; and the original of the whole con- 
ception is to be found in Ezekiel xvi, 9-14. "Then washed 
I thee with water; yea, I thoroughly washed away thy 
blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil. I clothed 
thee also with broidered Avork, and shod thee with badger's 
skin, and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I cov- 
ered thee with silk. I decked thee also with ornaments, 
and I put bracelets on thy hands and a chain on thy neck." 
It will hardly be pretended that in this language of 
the prophet, the washing with water implies any mixture 
of the natural element with that process of grace which is 
there described. And that the prophet and the apostle 
refer to the same thing is manifest. There is no direct 
allusion in the passage to ritual baptism. The water is 
the familiar metaphor of the Spirit, and the washing is the 
expression for his renewing and sanctifying influences on 
the soul. 

2. The assertion that (rema) "the word," here means 
the formula of baptism, is an assumption, w^holly indefen- 
sible. In the first place, there is no formula of baptism 
ordained by Jesus, or recognized or used by the sacred 
writers. Of this, the evidence w^ill hereafter appear. 
Moreover, in the New Testament, and especially in the 
writings of Paul, the word in question, rema, is invariably 
used in the sense of the testimonies, — the doctrines, — the 
word of God, — the gospel. Thus, the angel said to the 
apostles, — " Go, stand and speak in the temple, to the peo- 
ple, all (ta reiaata) the words of this life." — Acts v, 20. 
Peter tells the house of Cornelius, — " That word (rema) 
ye know . . . how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with 
the Holy Ghost and with power," etc. — lb. x, 37, 38. 
Paul, in this very same epistle, tells the Ephesians (vi, 17) 
that "the sword of the Spirit" "is the word (rema) of 



392 BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. [Part XIII. 

God." And Peter declares that "tlie imrd (rema) of the 
Lord endureth forever ; and this is the word (rerna) -which 
by the gospel is preached unto you." — 1 Peter i, 25. No 
word in the Scriptures is of a more unequivocal meaning 
than this. 

3. The interpretation of rema as meaning the baptismal 
formula, is a recognition of the unquestionable fact that 
" the word" is made by the apostle the instrumental cause 
of the sanctifying. Literally translated the passage reads, — 
" That he might sanctify it, — having purified it by the 
washing of water, — by the word." Thus, the word is the 
instrument of the sanctifying, and the parenthetic clause 
states the figure by which the analogy of the bride is sus- 
tained. The sanctifying and the purifying are the same 
spiritual phenomenon, the one phrase being conformed to 
the idea of the church, the other to that of the bride. 
And, whether the common English version be accepted, or 
the construction of the original be literally followed, as 
above, the result remains the same, that "the word" is 
distinctly stated to be the instrument of the process de- 
scribed by the two words, "sanctify" and "cleanse." In 
what sense the word is sanctifying, let Jesus testify. " The 
words (ta remata) that I speak unto you" (literally, "that 
I have spoken unto you," that is, in his preceding dis- 
course), " they are spirit, and they are life."— John vi, 63. 
"Now ye are clean, through (tou logon) the word that I 
have spoken unto you.— lb. xv, 3. "Sanctify them through 
thy truth, thy word (logos) is truth. . . . And for their 
sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified 
through the truth."— lb. xvii, 17, 19. " Chosen unto sal- 
vation, through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of 
the truth."— 2 Thes. ii, 13. The word is the means and 
the Spirit the eflScieut author of grace. 



Skc. LXXXIV.] ritual la IV NOT REPEALED. 393 



Part XIV. 

THE NEW TESTAMENT CPIURCH. 

Section LXXXIV. — The Bitual Law was not Repealed. 

IN the entrance of the church upon her new commission, 
her constitution was unchanged. But the ordinances 
of testimony with which she was entrusted received an essen- 
tial modification. The nature and the manner of this were 
alike remarkable ; and as the subject has not received the 
attention due to its importance, it requires here the more 
careful consideration. In the course thereof, it will appear 
that the Hebrew Christian church remained with its insti- 
tutions all unaltered, as they were received from Moses, 
and the ceremonial law in full authority and operation, 
down to the close of the New Testament canon. But the 
Gentile element, which was by the preaching of the gospel 
gathered in and incorporated with the church, was, by ex- 
press statute, exempted from the obligation of that law. 

1. The Lord Jesus was " a minister of the circumcision 
for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto 
the fathers; and that the Gentiles might glorify God for 
his mercy." — Rum. xv, 8, 9. He lived and died in the 
full communion of the church of Israel, in so far as his own 
action or will was concerned ; although he was in the end 
excommunicated and betrayed by the rulers of that church. 
He assured his disciples that he came not to destroy the 
law but to fulfill. (Matt, v, 17.) Neither by example 
nor by precept did he set aside or abrogate it ; but, on the 
contrary, having himself obeyed every precept and observed 
every ordinance, he left it, at his ascension, in full and un- 
impaired authority. 



394 NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH. [Part XIV. 

2. The apostles and the church over which they pre- 
sided io Jerusalem were not only zealous in their observ- 
ance of the law ; but were not altogether exempt from the 
influence of some of the most obnoxious of the traditions 
of the elders. Of this, the case of Peter's visit to the house 
of Cornelius presents a signal illustration. To prepare 
him to listen to the message from the Roman centurion, a 
miraculous vision was shown him. And, when the disciples 
in Jerusalem heard of the matter, they accused him, for 
having gone in to men uncircumcised and eaten with them. 
And yet there was not a syllable in the laws of Moses to 
justify such extreme reserve. It was wholly based upon 
the traditions of the elders. So powerful and prevalent 
was the sentiment among Jewish Christians, on this sub- 
ject, that it subsequently became the occasion of a very 
singular dereliction on the part of Peter. Says Paul, — 
"When Peter was come to Autioch, I withstood him to 
the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that 
certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles ; but 
when they were come, he w^ithdrew, and separated himself, 
fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the 
other Jews dissembled likewise with him, insomuch that 
Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation." — 
Gal. ii, 11-13. Respecting this it is not enough to say 
that Peter and the Judaizers were all wrong. True. But 
such a state of things could not have existed, had the 
church or the apostles understood the law of Moses to be, 
in any manner, abrogated or set aside. 

3. The calling and decree of the council of Jerusalem 
are very important facts, as bearing on this subject. The 
occasion of the council was the attempt of Judaizing teach- 
ers to impose circumcision and the ritual law upon the 
Gentile converts. (Acts xv, 1-5.) Hereupon, " the apos- 
tles and elders came together to consider of this matter." — 
V. 6. Here, at once, it is impossible that such a question 
could have arisen, had the abrogation of the Mosaic law 



Sec. LXXXIV.] RITUAL LAW NOT REPEALED. 395 

beeu a fact known to the church iu Jerusalem ; and assur- 
edly in that case, there would have been no room for the 
apostles and elders to " consider" such a question, the very 
raising of which would have been the erection of a standard 
of open rebellion against Christ. The discussions and de- 
cree of the council were equally conclusive. No doubt was 
suggested, in any quarter as to the continued authority of 
the law. No one hinted at the idea of its repeal. The dis- 
cussion turned entirely on the privilege of the Gentiles to 
be s^iecially exempt from its requirements. The evidence 
of such exemption was found in the fact that God had, in 
a special manner, shown his acceptance of them, outside 
the law. Upon this point, the whole issue turned ; and the 
proof respecting it was formally given by Peter, in a re- 
hearsal of the facts concerning the house of Cornelius (vs. 
7, 8); and by Paul and Barnabas, in an account of "the 
miracles and wonders which God had wrought among the 
Gentiles by them." — vs. 12. Moreover, the conclusion 
reached (vs. 14-19), and the decree issued, had express 
relation, to the Gentiles, only, and not to the whole body 
of the church. In a word, it was a decree recognizing and 
proclaiming the exemption of the Gentiles from the obliga- 
tion of the existing law. — "The apostles and elders and 
brethren send greeting unto the brethren which are of the 
Gentiles, iu Antioch, and Syria, and Cilicia. Forasmuch 
as we have heard, that certain which went out from us, 
have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, say- 
ing. Ye must be circumcised awd keep the law, to Avhom 
we gave no such commandment. ... It seemed good to 
the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater 
burden than these necessary things ; that ye abstain from 
meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things 
strangled, and from fornication ; from which, if ye keep 
yourselves ye shall do well. Fare ye well." — vs. 23-29. 
Such is the only rule or decree found in the New Testa- 
ment, respecting the ritual law. It exempts the Gentiles 



396 NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH. [Part XIV. 

from its obligations; but otherwise leaves it iu unimpaired 
authority. 

4. With this view, the whole subsequent history of the 
apostolic church agrees. Paul was the great apostle of the 
Gentiles. He was prompt and decided in asserting and 
vindicating their liberty from the obligations of the law ; 
but was himself conscientious ni the observance of all its 
requirements, and fully recognized their obligation upon 
himself and his brethren of Israel. These facts were 
brought into question, and publicly established in the most 
signal manner. When he came to Jerusalem after his 
third missionary tour, in an interview with James and the 
elders of the church, they said to him " Thou seest, brother, 
how many thousands (ynuriades, how many tens of thou- 
sands,) of Jews there are which believe; and they are all 
zealous of the law. And they are informed of thee that 
thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles 
to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise 
their children, neither to walk after the customs. What 
is it therefore ? The multitude must needs come together ; 
for they will hear that thou art come. Do, therefore, this 
that we say to thee. We have four men which have a 
vow on them. Them take and purify thyself with them, 
and be at charges with them, that they may shave their 
heads : and all may know that those things whereof they 
have been informed concerning thee are nothing, but that 
thou thyself also walkest orderly and keepest the law. As 
touching the Gentiles which believe, we have written and 
concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that 
they keep themselves from things offered to idols, and from 
blood, and from strangled, and from fornication." — Acts 
xxi, 20-25. To this suggestion Paul agreed, and was iu 
the temple in fulfillment of it, awaiting the time when 
" an offering should be offered for every one of them," 
when a tumult was raised by the unbelieving Jews, and 
his imprisonment took place, wdiich resulted in his being 



Sec. LXXXIV.] RITUAL LAW NOT REPEALED. 397 

sent, in chains, to Cesarea, and to Rome. (Acts xxi, 
26, 27.) 

Respecting this matter, the first point to be noticed is 
the fact that the myriads of Jewish Christians were unan- 
imous. — They " were all zealous of the law." The imagi- 
nation of Conybeare and Howson and others that the pro- 
ceeding was the work of a Judaizing faction and was 
consented to for the sake of peace, is not only without 
■warrant in the record, but is in contradiction to its whole 
tenor, and spirit. In fact the entire conception of the first 
named writers on the subject is characterized by a strained 
and perverse ingenuity, rather than by the simplicity of a 
sound criticism. And yet they have to admit that the law 
continued in unimpaired authority over all Jewish believ- 
ers. Why then labor to stigmatize the church in Jerusa- 
lem or an imaginary faction therein for being zealous in 
its maintenance? 

The purpose and intent of this transaction as expressly 
avowed by James and the elders was to draw a broad line 
of distinction between Jews and Gentiles in relation to the 
law. In their very suggestion to Paul, they refer to the 
former council and decree. — "As touching the Gentiles 
which believe, we have written and concluded that they 
observe no such thing." Thus, avowedly, the course pro- 
posed was designed to interpret that decree, and to limit 
its purview to the Gentiles. It was, moreover, a trans- 
action taking 2'>lace in circumstances which imparted to it 
the very highest moment. It was in Jerusalem, the center 
whence Jesus had commanded his apostles that the gospel 
should go forth. They were to preach in all the world, 
*' beginning at Jerusalem." There, consequently the first 
labors of the twelve were expended ; there, some of them 
were almost always fi)und ; and to that church the Gentile 
churches looked as the fountain of their faith and authori- 
tative exponent to them of the will of Christ. Such had 
been the prophetic anticipation long before respecting this 



398 NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH, [Part XIV. 

very time. — " Out of Ziou shall go forth the law ; and the 
word of the Lord from Jerusalem." — Isa. ii, 3. Already 
had that church sent forth the law concerning the relation 
of the Gentiles to the Mosaic institutions. And now the 
question to be decided was equally important, and the 
action proposed, although different in form, was equally 
responsible and decisive. A decree of confirmation of the 
law, which had stood unimpeached for fifteen centuries 
would have been inappropriate and calculated rather to 
awaken doubts than to strengthen conviction. The course 
proposed and adopted was more appropriate and efifective. 
Paul was the great apostle of the Gentiles, the recognized 
and world-renowned champion, not only of the freedom of 
the Gentiles, but of the liberty of the gospel, the liberty 
of all Christ's people. The spectacle, therefore, of this 
great apostle, performing Levitical rites of purifying and 
publicly appearing at the temple, in order to the offering 
of sacrifices, in completion of a Nazarite vow, would con- 
stitute a most decisive demonstration and announcement 
of the continued obligation of the law, over all Israel. It 
was not a case, therefore, in which a privilege might be 
waived for the sake of peace. Submission to these pro- 
posals, if they were unwarranted, would have been treason, 
at once to Christ and to the liberties of the apostle's own 
people. How likely it was that Paul, having already vindi- 
cated with firmness and success the freedom of the Gentiles 
from the bondage of the law, should have conspired to 
betray the liberties of his own beloved Israel, on the very 
same point, in the interest of a time-serving policy, may 
be judged from his whole history and writings. The alter- 
native presented by the facts is of itself conclusive. Either 
the law remained in unimpaired authority, over Israel, — 
or, Paul and James, the elders, and all the myriads of be- 
lieving Jews, were united, without dissent or exception, in 
a conspiracy to repudiate the authority of the Lord Jesus, 
and re-establish a law repealed by him. 



Sec. LXXXIV.] RITUAL LAW NOT REPEALED. 399 

5. The action of Paul upon this occasion was not an 
instance of mere occasional conformity, but was expressly 
designed by the apostle as a testimony to the Jews that 
he did not repudiate the law, but "walked orderly and 
kept it." And an examination of his manner of life and 
ministry will show that this testimony was true, — that he 
was constant and conscientious in his own observance of the 
law, and recognition of its authority. Wherever he went, 
his first recourse was to the worshiping assemblies of the 
Jews, to which he joined himself as one of them, with- 
drawing only when rejected from their company. (Acts 
xvii, 2; xix, 8, 9, etc.) One incident in the story of his 
ministry affords us a glimpse into the inner chamber of 
his sentiments and the spirit of his personal life, as toward 
the law. On his second missionary tour, leaving Corinth, 
he sailed into Syria, "and with him Priscilla and Aquila; 
having shorn his head in Cenchrea: for he had a vow." — 
Acts xviii, 18. Some expositors have explained this vow 
as taken by Aquila and not by Paul. Olshausen, who, 
however, rejects this theory, says that "those learned men 
who deny the reference of the words to Paul, suppose that 
the statement can not be applied to him, because it would 
have been inconsistent with his principles regarding the 
abrogation of the ceremonial law of Moses, to have taken 
upon him a vow." Conybeare and Howson, who hesitate 
between the two views, say that "the difficulty lies not so 
much in supposing that Paul took a Jewish vow (see Acts 
xxi, 26) as in sujiposing that he made himself conspicuous 
for Jewish peculiarities while he was forming a mixed 
church at Corintli." But all admit that the Greek in this 
place points as distinctly to Paul as does the common 
English version. We already know enough, certainly, to 
caution us against forcing an interpretation, on the ground 
that the ceremonial law was abrogated. We have seen 
tlie apostle take upon him such a vow, in the most public 
and demonstrative manner. And, as to the difficulty made 



400 NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH. [Part XIV. 



by Conybeare and Howson, it is founded in a 
mistake of the facts. The vow may have been made in 
Corinth. Of that we know nothing. But the shaving of 
his head, to which alone the suggestion as to "making 
himself conspicuous" could apply, took place in Cenchrea, 
after leaving Corinth and when in the act of sailing for 
Syria. 80 that the facts as recorded look rather to the 
avoidance of notoriety than seeking it. So far as the 
record indicates, the vow being connected with Paul's own 
private religious life, was only known to his j^ersonal attend- 
ants, in connection with the fact of his shaving his head, 
and the diligence with which he sought to reach Jerusalem 
in time for the feast. (Vs. 21, 22.) This was no doubt 
connected with the fulfillment of his vow, which of neces- 
sity required offerings at the temple. It thus appears that 
not only did the apostle maintain an outward and formal 
observance of the law ; but that his private devotional life 
and experience took its form from the ordinances of that 
law, and found expression in them ; a fact utterly irrecon- 
cilable, as was his whole life and teachings, with the assump- 
tion that he looked upon them as being abrogated or 
obsolete. 

On this and other occasions, there are intimations that 
as often as was consistent with the duties of his ministry, 
he was accustomed to resort to Jerusalem, in observance 
of the annual feasts, and for the purpose of making offer- 
ings at the temple. " I came," says he to Felix, " to bring 
alms to my nation, and offerings. Whereupon certain Jews 
from Asia found me 'purified in the temple." — Acts xxiv," 
17, 18; comp. xx, 16. 

Another important fact appears in the record. With 
a significant discrimination, Paul circumcised Timothy the 
son of a Jewess; although, his father being a Greek, he 
might have claimed exemption as a Gentile (Acts xvi, 
1-3) ; " But, neither Titus, who was with me, being a 
Greek was compelled to be circumcised; and that because 



Sec. LXXXIV.] RITUAL LAW NOT REPEALED. 401 

of false brethren, unawares brought in, who came in privily 
to spy out our liberty Avhich we have in Christ Jesus, that 
they might bring us into bondage: to whom we gave 
place, by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth 
of the gospel might continue with you." — Gal. ii, 3-5. 
Thus, in Timothy and Titus, Paul's favorite disciples and 
constant attendants and helpers in his later "ministry, he 
carried with him exemplars and representatives of the op- 
posite relations to the law, which he recognized in the 
Jews and the Gentiles. 

Moreover during his imprisonment, in reply to the 
charge of being a contemner of the law, the apostle repeat- 
adly and unqualifiedly asserted that he had been constant 
and faithful in observance of it. In the presence of the 
council of Israel, he announced himself a Pharisee. Of 
the same thing he writes to the Philippians, that he had 
"no confidence in the flesh. Though I might also have 
confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that 
he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Cir- 
cumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the 
tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews ; as touching 
the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the 
church; touching the righteousness which is in the law 
blameless." — Phil, iii, 3-G. It is true that the description 
here given by the apostle has especial reference to the past 
time of his unconverted zeal. But it is also true, that 
his introductory comparison with others, as to grounds of 
self-righteous confidence, is in the present tense, and indi- 
cates a conscious fidelity to the law down to the time of his 
writing. When accused before Festus, "he answered for 
himself, — Neither against ilie law of the Jews, neither against 
the temple, nor yet against Csesar, have I offended any 
thing at all." — Acts xxv, 8. And when at last he was 
taken to Rome, he there called the chief of the Jews to- 
gether, and said to them, "Men and brethren, though I 
have committed nothing against the people or customs of our 

34 



402 NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH. [Part XIV. 

fathers, yet was I delivered prisoner from Jerusalem into 
the hands of the Romans." — Acts xxviii, 17. 

Is it asked, how all this is to be reconciled with the 
doctrine of the epistle to the Galatiaus, and other testi- 
monies of Paul respecting circumcision and the law ? I 
answer, — Paul nowhere utters a syllable in disapproval of 
the observance of the law by the Jews, as a rule of life. 
AVhat he assails is, a trusting in it, for themselves, or im- 
posing it on others, as a rule of righteousness unto salva- 
tion. While he proclaimed salvation by grace, through 
faith alone, without the works of the law, moral or ritual, 
he with perfect consistency not only himself kept the law, 
but enjoined it on his brethren after the flesh. His prin- 
ciple of action in this respect, he states explicitly, "Is any 
man called, being circumcised? Let him not become un- 
circumcised. Is any called in uncircumcisiou ? Let him 
not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncir- 
cumcisiou is nothing, but the Tceeping of the commandments of 
God. Let every man abide in the same calling wherein 
he was called. Art thou called being a servant ? care not 
for it ; but if thou mayest be made free use it rather." — 1 
Cor. vii, 18-21. Thus distinctly does Paul recognize cir- 
cumcision as still being, to the Jews, a commandment of 
God ; as exemption from it was to the Gentiles. And it 
need scarcely be said, that circumcision here stands for the 
whole law. It is to be considered, moreover, that this lan- 
guage of Paul is not a mere recognition of circumcision as 
still existing by the providence of God ; but it is an ex- 
press and unreserved re-enforcement of the law, by his 
whole authority, as an apostle of Jesus Christ, — a re- 
enforcement broad and unlimited as to time or circum- 
stances as was the law itself. This unlimited character of 
the apostle's decree, is emphasized and strengthened by the 
exception which he appends to the general form of his 
enunciation ; — " Let every man abide in the calling wherein 
he Avas called." Lest any should interpret this rule as de- 



Sec. LXXXlY.]/i!/'rC/AL LA IV NOT REPEALED. 403 

signed to apply to cases outside the theme iu hand, he 
adds, — "Art thou called being a servant? Care not for 
it ; but if thou niayest be made free, use it rather." So far 
from moderating or weakening the force of the apostle's 
previous language, this adds greatly to it; showing as it 
does, that the question of exceptions and limitations was 
present to his mind. Then was the time, if ever, for him 
to have intimated the doing away of the ritual law ; or, at 
least, to so guard his language as to harmonize it with its 
ultimate abrogation, had such been the j^urpose of God. 
The fact, therefore, that neither here nor elsewhere does he 
allude to such a jjurpose, but on the contrary gives the 
above unreserved injunction as a permanent part of the 
written word of God, leaves us but one alternative, — to 
reject the authority of Paul, as an inspired apostle, or to 
recognize circumcision and the law as being, to the Jew, 
the commandment of God, unrepealed. 

If, we further examine the epistles, we shall find that 
while they all are unanimous in repudiating the righteous- 
ness of the law ; they do not, anywhere assert or imply its 
repeal, as toward Israel. It will moreover be found that 
any inference as to the abrogation of the law, which may 
be deduced from the doctrine of grace, as taught by all the 
apostles, applies as directly to the moral as to the ritual 
code ; both of which are by them commonly comprehended 
together under the designation of, " the law," Upon their 
principles, reliance on a righteousness of works is just as 
much to be reprobated in the one form as in the other ; and 
the doctrine of salvation by grace is as consistent with the 
continued obligation and observance of the ritual, as, of 
the moral law. 

6. It is no slight argument in proof of the view here 
presented, that it alone exhibits the apostolic history as 
consistent and harmonious, based upon definite and inflex- 
ible principles, unanimously recognized and obeyed by the 
apostles and elders. That such must have been the case, 



404 NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH. [Part XIV- 

is involved in the manner in -vvhicli the apostles ay ere ap- 
pointed to preside over the transition period in the history 
of the church, and the Spirit given for their guidance 
therein. Many writers have assumed without the trouble 
of proof, that the ritual law could not any longer possess 
legitimate authority — that the coming of Christ, and his 
one offering of himself, of necessity, superseded and set 
it aside. They are, at once, involved in the necessity of 
treating the whole history of the aj^ostolic church as 
one of compromising policies and timeserving expedients. 
We are told of the extreme Judaism of James, the 
more moderate conservatism of Peter, and the free evan- 
gelical spirit of Paul. Their principles and parties are 
represented as maintaining a continual struggle, and the 
various facts of the history are explained as the prevalence 
of one or the other set of opinions, or the result of com- 
promise. On the contrary, there is not a trace of the least 
diversity of sentiment on these questions between the parties 
named, or any of the apostles or leaders of the church. 
Some "false brethren, unawares brought in" (Gal. ii, 4), 
attempted to create division ; but only developed harmony. 
The decree of the council of Jerusalem was no compromise, 
but the expression of unanimous sentiments ('omothumadon, 
'Mvith one heart," — Acts xv, 25), and was, moreover, dic- 
tated by the Holy Spirit. ' ' It seemed good to Uie Holy 
Ghost and to us." The so-called partisans of James, the 
Judaizing zealots, who troubled Paul's ministry, were ex- 
pressly repudiated in that decree, which was moved in the 
council by Peter and James, and apparently drafted by 
the hand of the latter.* The reason why the labors of 
James and Peter were mainly confined to the circumcision 
in Judea, while Paul preached among the far off Gentiles, 
was precisely the same in both cases, — the will of Christ. 
Says Paul, — " When they saw that the gospel of the uncir- 

*The ^' Greeting " {Chairein) Acts xv, 23; is found nowhere 
else m the New Testament, save in James i, 1. 



sbc.lxxxiv.] ritual la w not repealed. 405 

cumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the cir- 
cumcisiou was unto Peter ; (for He that wrought effectually 
in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same 
was mighty in me toward the Gentiles ;) and when James, 
Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the 
grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barn- 
abas the right hands of fellowship ; that we should go unto 
the heathen, and they unto the circumcision." — Gal. ii, 
7-9. No. The blood-bought church of Christ, w^as not left, 
at this critical time, to the. mercies of the passions and 
prejudices, the narrowness and factions of fallible men. It 
was under the direction of the Lord Jesus, and the inspi- 
ration of the Holy Spirit. The prayer " that they all may 
be one," was not unheard, nor unanswered of the Father ; 
and the promise that the Spirit should guide them into all 
truth was fulfilled. 

From this careful survey, it appears, that the New 
Testament contains no evidence of the abrogation or pass- 
ing away of the ceremonial law, — that its unimpaired 
authority over Israel was fully and universally acknowledged 
and asserted by the apostles and the churches over which 
they presided ; while the exemption of the. Gentiles from 
its requirements was recognized as exceptional, and secured 
by formal consultation and decree ; — that this condition 
of things continued unchanged to the close of the New 
Testament canon ; — and that as a necessary consequence, 
that law never has been repealed , to this day. As once before, 
during the seventy years of the Babylonian captivity, Israel 
was providentially precluded from its observance, so at 
present, it is one of the most afflictive features of the 
divine dealings with them, that the law, which they idc)l- 
ized and so grievously perverted, still binds them ; while 
the destruction of the temple, the disorganization of the 
nation and the obliterating of the priesthood renders its 
fulfillment ])y them impossible. 



406 NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH. [Part XIV. 

Section LXXXV. — Why the Gentiles were Exempt from 
the Law, 

The exemption of the Gentile Christian church from 
the authority of the ceremonial law must be accounted for 
upon some principle which will harmonize with -all the 
facts. The common theory assumes it to be of the very 
nature of a type to perish and be abrogated by its realiza- 
tion in the antitype. Thus", it is supposed, that the sacri- 
ficial system of necessity expired with its fulfillment by 
Christ's one oiFering of himself. But, as we have seen, the 
law was not in fact abrogated, but continues in unimpaired 
authority over Israel. Why, then, are the Gentiles ex- 
empt from its obligations? 

The reason was briefly intimated by Peter. *' "Why 
tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, 
which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear;" — 
literally, " neither (ischusamen) were strong to bear." — Acts 
XV, 10. This verb means, to he strong, and is sometimes 
used with a negative particle, as here, to indicate a labor 
of great difiiculty, not amounting to an impracticability. 
Thus, in John xxi, 6, it is said of the net of fishes, — 
*'They were not able" (were not strong) "to draw it, for 
the multitude of fishes." And yet, immediately after, w'hen 
their force had been reduced by Peter casting himself into 
the sea and swimming to land, they came ''dragging the 
net with fishes," and Peter himself drew it to land. (vs. 
8, 11.) The ritual law was a burdensome, although not im- 
possible institution, for Israel, when dwelling in their own 
land. But, as a system of worship for a world -religion, it 
was unsuitable. Essential to it was the one temple, altar 
and priest, at Jerusalem, typical of the one sanctuary 
and service in heaven. Hither must all males repair 
statedly, three times a year, and both men and women upon 
many special occasions beside, of a personal nature. To a 
population of four or five millions, dwelling in the narrow 



Sec. LXXXV.] U7/Y THE GENTILES EXEMPT. 407 

limits of Palestine, — a territory the extreme dimensions of 
Avhicli Avere about 100 miles by 150, — tbis was possible, 
altbough burdensome. But, to tbe distant millions of the 
"world's inhabitants, manifestly it would have been utterly 
impracticable. 

Moreover, to the race at large, the ceremonial law had 
already fulfilled its most important and essential offices. 
Undoubtedly, it could still have been used by the grace of 
God, as it had been for ages before, as a mode for the 
effectual transmission and dissemination of the gospel testi- 
mony, kept in unimpaired purity by the agency of un- 
changing forms. Nor is the fact to be everlooked, or 
lightly regarded, that representations to the eye and the 
physical senses have a peculiar power over the affections 
and the heart, a power often greater and more influential 
than any appeal to the intellect through the organs of hear- 
ing. Had such been the will of God, the ritual system 
was certainly susceptible of being made a powerful auxil- 
iary^ to the dissemination of the gospel, by its relation to 
these principles of man's nature. 

But, when the gospel was given to the Gentiles, the sys- 
tem of elementary ideas which were embodied and exhibited 
in the Mosaic ceremonial possessed a world-wide diffusion. 
The art of writing had been developed and disseminated. 
The Old Testament Scriptures were already written and 
widely distributed, and the gospels and epistles were soon 
to follow. Thus the cardinal importance of the ritual 
ordinances as a mode for the recording and perpetuation 
of the gospel was obsolete, — replaced by means more ap- 
propriate to a religion now destined for the world. And the 
" demonstration of the Spirit and of power," which now 
accompanies the preaching of the gospel among the Gen- 
tiles, is abundant compensation for the ritual system, as an 
appeal to the affections, through the senses. 

It is thus apparent that the discrimination, in the be- 
ginning made between Jew and Gentile respecting the 



408 NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH. [Part XIV. 

ceremonial law, — its obligation on the one, and the ex- 
emption of the other, — was neither arbitrary nor unmeaning, 
but alike reasonable and susceptible of full and beautiful 
realization in practice. It implied the continuance of 
Israel as a priest-kingdom among the nations, maintaining 
at Jerusalem, as a standard of faith to the world, that sys- 
tem of rites which so beautifully, so clearly and impres- 
sively set forth the gospel to the eyes and senses of men ; 
whilst, the world over, the same gospel should have been 
published, by the written and printed word, by the living 
voice, and by the simple ritual of Gentile Christianity, 
practicable everywhere. But such was not the purpose 
of God. At the beginning, our first parents by sin for- 
feited the Eden which might have been theirs. So, Israel 
forfeited her offered privilege. Jerusalem was destroyed, 
and the gospel and the church were given to the Gentiles, — 
*' until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in ; and so all 
Israel shall be saved." — Rom. xi, 25, 26. 

Section LXXXVI. — T/ie Christian Passover. 

To the church among the Gentiles, two simple ordi- 
nances remain, an inheritance from the ancient church, — a 
memorial and link of connection and identity between the 
two ; and a continuous sealing of the same covenant, trans- 
mitted from the one to the other. That the Supper is thus 
derived from the paschal feast, can not be denied. As early 
as Jacob's prophecy of Shiloh, "the blood of the grape" 
was appropriated as a type of Christ's sufferings. (Gen. 
xlix, 9-12.) Afterward, in the Levitical system, a meat or 
bread offering made of fine flour mixed with oil, and a 
drink offering of wine, were made essential parts of all 
sacrificial offerings. (See Num. xv, and xviii.) Of the 
festival offerings, to which the passover belonged, a part 
only was offered upon the altar; the rest being appropriated 
to the worshippers. Tiiey thus enjoyed communion with 
God, at his table; and hence the proverbial description 



Skc, LXXXVL] THE CHRfSTI AN PASSOVER. 409 

of " wine which cheeretli God and mau." — Judg. ix, 13. 
Thus, in the passover aud all the Levitical sacrifices, two 
distinct elements were typical of Christ's sufferings ; but iu 
wholly different aspects. The blood signified the satisfac- 
tion demanded by justice; and it was, therefore, utterly 
prohibited that men should eat of it. (Lev. xvii, 10-14.) 
It was poured upon the altar. But the wine expressed the 
virtue of that satisfaction, imparted to believers and re- 
ceived by them, to their spiritual nourishment. Thus, the 
wine of the supper is not a substitute for the blood of sac- 
rifice, but is a distinct and co-ordinate type, transmitted 
from the passover, and other sacrificial rites, and unchanged 
in its meaning. The unleavened bread always symbolized 
the Bread of life that came down from heaven; and the 
cup always represented the blood of the new covenant. 

That the passover was from the beginning a type of 
the atonement of the Lord Jesus, is certain. (1.) The 
ordinance was a feast upon a sacrifice. From the found- 
ation of the world, sacrifice signified one thing, — the satis- 
faction to be made to justice by the Lord Jesus. Such 
being the case, the feast of Israel upon the pascal lamb 
could have but one meaning. That meaning was set forth 
by Jesus, who having been announced by John as the 
Lamb of God, himself says, "If any man eat of this 
bread (artou, "of this food"), he shall live forever, and the 
food that I will give, is my flesh, which I will give for the 
life of the world." — John vi, 51. (2.) The deliverance of 
Israel from the bondage of Egypt, was an exercise of the 
same redeeming function, which is displayed in the salva- 
tion of men ; and was a type of that salvation. Hence 
the preface to the ten commandments. — "I am the Lord 
thy God which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, 
Old of Hie hoitse of bondage" (Ex. xx, 2); which the West- 
minster catechism explains that " because God is the Lord 
and our God and Redeemer, therefi)re, we are bound to 
keep all his commandments." (3.) Jesus himself at the 



410 NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH. [Part XIV. 

very time when he eliminated the Lord's supper out of 
the passover, declared the latter to be a type of his suffer- 
ings and death. "With desire I have desired to eat this 
passover with you before I suffer. For I say unto you, I 
will not any more eat thereof, until it he fulfilled in the 
kingdom of God." — ^Luke xxii, 15, 16. 

How plainly the Lord's supper was an epitome and 
perpetuation of the passover, will be understood, by refer- 
ence to the manner of observance of the latter in the time 
of Christ. It was required of those who partook t>f the 
feast, that they should not sit, but recline at the table, as 
expressing liberty and rest. When they Avere thus disposed, 
wine was distributed, and after thanks given by the pre- 
siding person, each one drank a cup. The master then 
explained the nature and occasion of the feast, and distrib- 
uted a second cup. He then brake the unleavened bread, 
gave thanks, and gave it to the company, w^itli the bitter 
herbs and other provisions that WTre on the table, and 
afterward the flesh of the lamb. When all had eaten and 
the supper was ended, he that presided took another cup 
of wine, and, after blessing God, all drank of it. This 
was called "the cup of blessing," because of the blessing 
on it, which ended the feast. Thus the order of the feast 
was, (1) Thanksgiving; (2) A cup of wine; (3) The 
commemorative discourse; (4) A second cup; (5) A sec- 
ond thanksgiving; (6) The broken bread; (7) The flesh 
of the lamb; (8) The closing blessing; (9) The cup of 
blessing. So, at the beginning of the supper, Jesus took 
the cup, and gave thanks and said, "Take this, and divide 
it among yourselves." After discourse, and Avashing the 
disciples' feet, "he took bread, and gave thauks and brake 
it and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is 
given for you; this do in remembrance of me. Likewise, 
also, the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new 
testament in my blood, which is shed for you." — Luke 
xxii, 17-20. 



Sbc. LXXXVIL] HEBREW CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 411 

The Lord's supper was not, therefore, a distinct ordi- 
nance, instituted after the passover was ended, by the use 
of remaining elements. But it was a perpetuation of the 
passover, itself, by appropriating and interpreting portions 
of the elements, from time to time, during the progress of 
the feast; the bread being that which was broken and 
eaten before the paschal flesh, and the wine that which 
closed the feast ; which was known to the Jews and de- 
scribed in the Talmud, as the cup of blessing, and which 
is designated by that name by the apostle Paul, in speak- 
ing of the Lord's supper. (1 Cor. x, 16,) The particular 
number and order of the cups of wine and of the thanks- 
givings were regulations of the scribes, promotive of order 
and propriety in the observance ; but not included in the 
divine requirements of the institution, and therefore not 
essential to it. This fact being taken into account, it will 
appear that the paschal feast remains to us entire, except 
only the' sacrificial flesh of the lamb. Of it Paul says, 
"Christ our passover is sacrificed for us; therefore, let us 
keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven 
of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread 
of sincerity and truth." — 1 Cor. v, 7, 8. 

Section LXXXVIL — Tim Hebrew Christian Church. 

We proceed to trace the order and process of the devel- 
opment of the Christian church, as it took place under the 
Sinai constitution, with the ordinances modified as we have 
seen. The synagogue system had grown up long before 
the time of Christ. In it provision was made for fulfilling 
those injunctions of the law which insisted so much on in- 
struction and study in the word of God, and which set 
apart the Sabbaths as days of holy convocation. (Lev. 
xxiii, 3, etc.) In the organization of these societies, respect 
was undoubtedly had, at first, to the ties of consanguinity ; 
so that the members of a given cluster of families, living 
in the same vicinity and originally descended from one 



412 NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH. [Part XIV. 

head, were constituted a synagogue, under the direction 
and government of those who by the right of primogeni- 
ture Avere the family elders. But, in the time of Christ, 
the whole system of the distribution and inheritance of the 
land, and of the family organization, as apj^oiuted by the 
law of Moses, had been broken up by the repeated captivi- 
ties, the dispersion of the ten tribes, and the vicissitudes 
of war and peace. The synagogue system was therefore 
more artificial in its structure, and more characterized by 
the voluntary principle. Indications of voluntary associa- 
tion and elective affinity are plainly seen in the names of 
the synagogues members of which were active in the per- 
secution of Stephen. — "The synagogue of the Libertines, 
and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians." — Acts vi, 9. It is in- 
deed evident that in the general circumstances of the Jews 
at that time, in Judea and elsewhere, the worshiping as- 
semblies must usually have been the products of voluntary 
association, more or less influenced by congeniality of senti- 
ments among the members. Pharisees and Sadducees sev- 
erally would seek the worshiping assemblies in which their 
respective views were favored. Those of the same foreign 
nationality would naturally gravitate toward each other. 
And, in general, congeniality, from whatever cause, would 
be potential in these associations. 

The existence, at this time, in the bosom of the Jewish 
church of the tivo sects, or parties, of the Sadducees and 
the Pharisees, was a very important fact in preparing the 
way for the gospel. These parties are, in the original 
Greek, designated by the generic word, hairesis, which is 
commonly translated, "sect," as " the sect of the Sadducees" 
(Acts V, 17), "the sect of the Pharisees" (lb. xv, 5), 
" the sect of the Nazarenes," (lb. xxiv, 5). In one place, 
it is, " the way which they call hereby." — lb. xxiv, 14. 
Neither of these words, however, is a happy rendering of 
the original ; which has nothing of the idea of doctrinal 
error, now attached to the word, heresy; and nothing of 



Sec. LXXXVIL] HEBREW CHRISTIAN- CHURCH. 413 

the odium involved iu the designation of ''sects;" nor, of 
the denominational separations which are expressed by it. 
The word, as used in Luke's history signifies, a party, or 
rather, a society having a distinctive organization more or 
less complete, for certain special purposes; but continuing 
in the enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the 
Jewish church and the temple worship. Such was the 
position at once assumed, by the apostles and the converts 
of their ministry. They were organized in separate syna- 
gogues. They observed the first day of the week, as a day 
of assembling for worship and the breaking of bread. They 
received their converts by the familiar rite of baptism. 
But they were all zealous of the law, and faithful, there- 
fore, even above others in the observance of its require- 
ments. Thus, despite all the odium which Pharisees and 
Sadducees might seek to cast upon them, it was impossible 
to impeach them of apostasy from Judaism, or unfaithful- 
ness to Moses. Hence, the result recorded by Luke. 
" They, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, 
and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat 
with gladness and singleness of heart; praising God, and 
having favor with all the people." — Acts ii, 46, 47. 

Such was the aspect of things in Jerusalem and Judea 
for a quarter of a century ; from the first dissemination of 
the gospel to the times of anarchy which preceded the des- 
olation of the land. In the bosom of the Jewish church, 
beside the great body of the people, were the three socie- 
ties just mentioned. The Sadducees were comparatively 
few in number, but influential, by reason of their social 
position and wealth, the party being composed almost ex- 
clusively of the priests and aristocracy. The Pharisees 
were more numerous, and in greater favor with the people ; 
for, w4iile the Sadducees were chargeable with lax opinions, 
the Pharisees were '' tlie straitest sect of the Jews' religion," 
including all those who hoped to secure the favor of God 
through the ri<^hteousness of the law. Beside these was 



414 NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH. [Part XIV. 

" the sect of the Nazarenes," far greater in numbers than 
either of the others ; and, at first, more in favor with the 
mass of the people, — a favor which they seem to have re- 
tained till the growing corruption and disorder which her- 
alded the catastrophe of the nation, rendered them odious, 
alike by the contrast of their lives with the prevailing licen- 
tiousness, and by the rebukes and Avarniugs which they 
could not fail to utter. 

Whilst the number of the Christians, as compared with 
the whole nation was, no doubt, small, the mistake is to be 
avoided of regarding it as insignificant. A comparison of 
the various statements on the subject will lead to the con- 
clusion that the company of the believers must have been 
so large as to constitute one of the most conspicuous fea- 
tures in the aspect of the nation. On the day of Pentecost 
"there were added unto them about three thousand 
souls." — Acts ii, 41. A few days afterward, " many of 
them which heard the Avord believed, and the number of 
the men Avas about five thousand." — lb. iv, 4. Soon after, 
it is again recorded that " the people magnified them. And 
believers Avere the more added to the Lord, multitudes both 
of men and Avomeu."— lb. v, 13, 14. Again, it is stated 
that the high-priest demanded of tlie apostles, — " Did not 
we straitly command you that ye should not teacli in this 
name? And behold, ye have filled Jerusalem Avith your 
teaching (didaches), and intend to bring this man's blood 
upon us." — lb. V, 28. Such Avas the progress of the gos- 
pel that these rulers Avere alarmed lest they should be called 
by the people to account for the death of Jesus. Soon, 
again, Ave read that " the Avord of God increased ; and the 
number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly ; 
and a great company of the priests Avere obedient to the 
faith." — lb. vi, 7. Immediately after this Stephen was 
martyred, and " there Avas a great persecution against the 
church which Avas at Jerusalem ; and they were all scat- 
tered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, 



Skc. LXXXVIL] HEBREW CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 415 

except the apostles." — lb. viii, 1. By the dispersed be- 
lievei-s, the gospel was carried through the laud and to 
the Geutiles. (lb. xi, 19.) Aud in Jerusalem itself the 
word of the Lord was not bouud. The persecution, in its 
active form, soon ceased, and when the converted Saul re- 
tired from Jerusalem to Tarsus, we read that " then had 
the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Sa- 
maria, and were edified ; and walking in the fear of the 
Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost were multi- 
plied." — lb." ix, 31. Such was the new grow^th of the 
church in Jerusalem that when Paul made his last visit to 
that city, James could say to him, — ''Thou seest, brother, 
how many (miiriades) ten thousands of Jews there are 
which believe." — lb. xxi, 20. To the inference which 
naturally follows from these representations, the objection 
has been raised, that there is no accounting for such num- 
bers, in the after history. Alexander suggests, that many 
Avere false professors, who "afterward apostatized or sep- 
arated from the church, as Ebionites, or Judaiziug here- 
tics."* So dark a view, however, is not required by the 
facts. Doubtless there were some defections. But there 
is no reason to suppose them to have been of the extent 
here implied. The circumstances in which they united 
with the persecuted follow^ers of the man of Nazareth, were 
not such as to present attractions to false professors. The 
patristic tradition that none of the C^hristians perished in 
the siege of Jerusalem, they having all retired to Pella, 
whilst it may possibly be true, concerning those who lived 
in Jerusalem, is by no means probable. And so far from 
Jesus having taught the disciples to expect such a result, 
the reverse is the case. That the churches of believers 
which had been flourishing for a quarter of a century in 
Judea, Galilee and Samaria must have suffered greatly, 
from the disorders and anarchy which preceded the final 
catastrophe, is certain, and of it Jesus expressly forewarned 

*■ Alexander on Acts, xxi, 20. 



416 NjEW testament church. [Part XIV. 

them. — ** Ye shall be betrayed both by parents and breth- 
ren and kinsfolks, and friends ; and some of you shall they 
cause to be put io death. And ye shall be hated of all men 
for my name's sake. Bat there shall not an hair of your 
head perish " (even though ye be put to death). *' In your 
patience possess ye your souls. And when ye shall see Je- 
rusalem compassed with armies, then know that the deso- 
lation thereof is nigh." — Ijuke xxi, 16-20. See, also, Matt, 
xxiv, 9-13 ; Mark xiii, 9-13. As to what afteVward be- 
came of the Christians of Judea, — in view of the scanty re- 
maining records of the time, and of the manner in which 
they w^ere identified with their brethren of Israel as being 
none the less Jews because they were Christians, — it is not 
surprising that we can not distinctly trace their subsequent 
history. One fact, however, is patent on the face of the 
scanty record, and is sufficient to satisfy all the demands 
of the occasion. It is, that as the Christian churches, at 
a later period, emerge into the light of history they every- 
where bear the broad and indelible impress of Hebrew 
Christian influences. 

The subsequent history of the Hebrew church in Je- 
rusalem itself very signally confirms the view here pre- 
sented. As soon as the city began to be repeopled, a 
church was re-established, under the presidency, as Eusebius 
reports, of Simeon the son of Cleopus. Of his successors, 
that historian says,— " We have not ascertained, in any 
way, that the times of the bishops of Jerusalem have been 
regularly preserved on record. For tradition says that 
they all lived but a very short time. So much, however, 
have I learned from writers, that down to the invasion of 
the Jews under Adrian there were fifteen successions of 
bishops in that church, all which, they declare to liave 
been Hebrews from the first, and received the knowledge 
of Christ pure and unadulterated, so that in the estimation 
of those who were able to judge, they were well approved 
and worthy of the episcopal office. For, at that time, the 



Sec. LXXXVIL] HEBREW CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 417 

whole churcli imder them consisted of believing Hebrews 
who continued from the time of the apostles until the siege 
that then took place." The historian gives a list of the 
succession of fifteen bishops. "These are all the bishops 
of Jerusalem that filled up the time from the apostles until 
the above mentioned date, — all being of the circumcision."* 
The list ends with the name of Judah, who perished by 
the sword of the impostor, Simon, surnamed Bar Kokeba, 
** the Son of the Star." This adventurer, originally a rob- 
ber chieftain, had announced himself as the expected Mes- 
siah of Israel. The Jews, groaning under the oppressions 
of the Romans, rushed to arms and rallied to his stand- 
ard, to the number of more than 200,000 men. He 
would brook no neutrality. The Gentiles of Palestine had 
to choose between his service and the sword. His demands, 
repelled by the Hebrew Christians, brought on them his 
exterminating vengeance, and Judah, the last of the He- 
brew succession of the bishops of Jerusalem, perished, with 
a multitude of his church, under the swords of the Jews.f 
Thus closed in blood the history of the Hebrew church in 
Jerusalem, in the year 132. As for Simon, — after success- 
fully defying for two years, the whole power of Rome, he 
and his forces were finally cooped up in the town of Bethar, 
which was taken by storm. The impostor perished, with 
a multitude of his followers, and the remnant glutted the 
slave markets of the world. " The numbers of persons who 
perished by sword, flame, and hunger, have been stated as 
high as 700,000, by others, 580,000. As to Judaism and the 
Jewish people, the land might be said, for some time, to 
be a solitude. The native inhabitants who had escaped the 
butchery of the war were expatriated either by banishment 
or flight, or sold into bondage. No Jew was now per- 
mitted to come within sight of Jerusalem, and Gentile 



* Eusebius iii, H ; iv, 5, 6. 

t Etheridge's Jerusalem and Tiberias, p. 71. 



418 NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH. [Part XIV. 

colonists were sent to take possession of the soil. Jerusa- 
lem in fact became a Gentile city."* 

Says Mosheim, — " AVhen the emperor (Adrian) had 
wholly destroyed Jerusalem, a second time, and had enacted 
severe laws against the Jews, the greater part of the 
Christians living in Palestine, that they might not be con- 
founded with Jews as they had been, laid aside the Mosaic 
ceremonies, and chose one Mark who was a foreigner and 
not a Jew, for their bishop. This procedure was very 
offensive to those among them whose attachment to the 
Mosaic rites was too strong to be eradicated. They there- 
fore separated from their brethren, and formed a distinct 
society, in Perea, a part of Palestine, and in the neighbor- 
ing regions; and among them the Mosaic law retained all 
its dignity unimpaired." f These Jewish Christians, known 
as Nazarenes, are traceable for several centuries, orthodox 
in their faith and embraced in the fellowship of the Catholic 
church, but strict in the observance of circumcision and the 
law of Moses, as far as practicable in the circumstances 
of the Jews. 



Section LXXXVIII.— T/ie Gentiles Graffed in. 

While such as we have described was the constitution 
of the church in Jerusalem and Judea, in the days of the 
apostles, it elsewhere presented a different aspect. At 
Antioch, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome 
and other places, Jews and Gentiles were associated to- 
gether in the churches. " Where such w^as the case, the 
Jewish members, like their brethren in Judea, maintained 
the ordinances of both the Levitical and Christian liturgies. 
They kept sacred alike the Jewish Sabbath and the Lord's 
day. They were circumcised, and observed all the require- 
ments of the law of Moses, and maintained all the services 
of the synagogue system. At the same time, they on the 

*-Etheridge, Ibid. p. 72. 

t Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., Cent. II., Part II., Ch. v, 1, 2. 



Sec. LXXXVIII.] THE GENTILES GRAFFED /AT 4.19 

Lord's day, imited with their belie viug Gentile brethren, 
in observing the ordinances of the gospel church, and the 
sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper. 

On the other hand, the Gentile members of these 
churches were uncircumcised and free from the bondage 
of the ritual law. They kept holy the Lord's day only; 
on which they united with their Jewish brethren in the 
ordinances of Christian worship and religion. At the same 
time these Gentile converts were more or less in the habit 
of frequenting the synagogue services, to hear the reading 
of the Scriptures and join in the worship of the God of 
Israel. In these services their position was similar to that 
held by the class of persons who were known as "devout 
persons," or " proselytes of the gate." In fact, it was usu- 
ally from these that the first Gentile converts to Christ 
were gathered. The strong tendency, which the circum- 
stances were calculated to induce in them, to embrace the 
entire system of Judaism as it was maintained by their 
Jewish Christian brethren, elicited from Paul those expost- 
ulations which have been misunderstood as implying the 
absolute abrogation of the law. His earnestness therein 
was induced by the fact, that the voluntary assumption of 
the yoke of the ritual law, by tliose upon whom God had 
not laid it, was a manifest apostasy from the doctrine of 
grace, — an attempt to fulfill a righteousness of works. 

Of the mixed state of these churches, the first epistle 
to the Corinthians presents constant illustrations. In it, 
Paul indulges in a frequency of allusion to Old Testament 
facts which presupposes his readers to be familiar with the 
sacred books of the Jews. In one place, he addresses them 
as being of the stock of Israel, " Brethren, I would not 
that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were 
under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and were 
all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea." — 
Ch. X, 1-11. On the other hand, the apostle alludes to 
disorders and offenses, in the church, which were evidently 



420 A'EW TESTAMENT CHURCH. [Part XIV. 

committed by the Gentile members (vi, 9-11 ; xi, 20-22), and 
moreover, says expressly, — " Ye know that ye were Gen- 
tiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were 
led." — xii, 2, He also, as we have already seen, gives ex- 
press instructions for continuing the distinction between 
Jew and Gentile, in the church. "Is any man called 
being circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised 
Is any called in uncircumcision ? Let him not be circum- 
cised." — vii, 18. 

But there was yet another class of churches, which may 
be exemplified in Lystra, Derbe, and Galatia, — churches 
where there were no Jews, or in which their number was 
so small as to constitute an uuappreciable element. In 
them, the Christian Sabbath and ordinances were alone 
observed, the assemblies and services on the Lord's day 
being precisely the same in their nature and manner as 
those maintained where Jews and Gentiles were united. 

Of all these churches, whether of Jewish, mixed, or 
Gentile elements, the local constitution and form of gov- 
ernment was the same ; being that of the synagogue. This 
the circumstances rendered inevitable ; and to it all the 
statements and intimations of the Scriptures testify. In 
fact, in the epistle of James they are expressly designated 
by that name. — "If there come unto your Sj/nagogue, 
(sunagogen) a man with a gold ring." — Ja. ii, 2. It is true 
the epistle is inscribed, " to the twelve tribes which are scat- 
tered abroad." — lb. i, 1. But it is to the Christians of 
those scattered tribes, that he addresses himself With 
them Gentile believers were always to be found united ; 
and no one will pretend that there were two forms of or- 
ganization ; one for the Jews, and another for the Gen- 
tiles. These churches were self-governed, so far as internal 
order and discipline were concerned. But with relation 
to the fundamental laws of their existence and rule of 
their faith they were in a state of recognized and entire 
dependence on the church in Jerusalem. This relation 



Sec. LXXXVIII.] THE GENTILES GRAFFEO IN. 421 

was indicated and expressed in a very peculiar and conclu- 
sive manner. The vital question concerning the relation 
of the Gentiles to the law of Moses arose in the church in 
Antioch, in which there were not only certain prophets 
(Acts xiii, 1, 2), but Paul the great apostle of the Gen- 
tiles. Naturally, we should have expected such a question 
to be brought to an immediate decision, by prophetic rev- 
elation, or by the authority of the apostle, confirmed by 
signs following. And, in fact, there wa^ an immediate 
divine interposition. But it was an interposition by which 
the question was remanded to Jerusalem to be decided 
there. Paul says to the Galatians, — "I went up to Jeru- 
salem, with Barnabas, and took Titus with me also. And 
I went up Qiaixi ajjokalupsin) in accordance with a revela- 
tion." — Gal. ii, 1, 2. Again, when he came to Jerusalem, 
there were present John, the beloved of Jesus, and Peter, 
the chief of the apostles; beside James, the brother of 
the Lord and head of the church in Jerusalem. (lb. ii, 9.) 
But not by either or all of them was the question decided, 
but referred to the council of the church, and, under the 
direction of the Holy Spirit, was there determined by de- 
liberative consultation and vote ; and the decree was drawn 
up and sent forth in the name of " the apostles, and elders 
and brethren." — Acts xv, 22, 23, 25. The relation of that 
council to the Jerusalem eldership and church is indicated 
by the manner in which at a later date those elders re- 
ferred to it, in conference with Paul. "As touching the 
Gentiles which believe, we have written and concluded." — 
Acts xxi, 25, 18. Upon Paul's return to Antioch, and 
resumption of his missionary labors, after the council, he 
and his attendants, "as they went through the cities, deliv- 
ered them the decrees for to keep, that were ordained of 
the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem." — lb. xvi, 
4. It would thus appear beyond question, that this busi- 
ness was so ordered by the Head of the church, as to dem- 
onstrate the fact of the organic dependence of the Gentile 



422 NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH. [Part XIV. 

churches everywhere, — not upon the authority of the apos- 
tles, as such, but upon the ancient church of Israel, in the 
councils of which the apostles sJft as elders, with the elders. 
(1 Peter v, 1.) It was an indication to the Gentile churches 
tliat their privilege was that of partakers with Israel in her 
spiritual things. (Rora. xv, 27.) Believing Israel was 
thus presented, as not only the source whence the gospel 
flowed to the Gentiles, but as ordained to be to them the 
authorized exponent of that gospel. The principle here 
involved, is appealed to by Paul, when in represshig the 
arrogant assumptions of some in the Corinthian church, 
he demands of them, — "What! came the word of God 
out from you? or, came it unto you, only?" — 1 Cor. xiv, 
36. In this relation of the Jewish church to those of the 
Gentiles, there was a fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah 
(ii, 3) reechoed by Micah: — "In the last days . . . many 
nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the 
mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of 
Jacob; and he wall teach us of his ways, and we will walk 
in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the 
w^ord of the Lord from Jerusalem." — Micah iv, 1, 2. 

Thus, while the great body of Israel after the flesh re- 
jected the Angel of the covenant, who was promised at Si- 
nai to their fathers (Ex. xxiii, 20), and in so doing for- 
feited and were cut ofi* from its fold, their believing brethren 
remained in full possession of its rights, and privileges ; and 
the Gentiles, receiving Christ, became with them partakers 
therein, according to the i:)roviso which from the beginning 
reserved room for them ; — " For all the earth is mine." — 
Ex. xix, 5. 

It was at a time when the condition of things here de- 
scribed, in Judea and among the Gentiles had attained to 
its completest realization, that Paul addressed the Romans 
in a figure which is in beautiful accord with the literal 
facts ; as they had been already realized. ' ' If some of the 
branches be broken off", and thou being a wild olive tree, 



Skc. lxxxviii.] the gentiles graffed in. 423 

wcrt graffed io among them, and with them partakest of 
the root and fatness of the olive tree, — boast not against 
the branches. But, if thou boast, thou bearest not the 
root; but the root, thee. Thou wilt say, then, . . . The 
branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in. 
Well : because of unbelief they Avere broken off, and thoii 
standest by faith. Be not highminded but fear. For if 
God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also 
spare not thee. . . . And they also if they abide not still 
in unbelief, shall be graffed in : for God is able to graff 
them in again. For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree, 
which is wdld by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature 
into a good olive tree ; how much more shall these which 
be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive 
tree."— Rom. xi, 17-24. 

The Christian church is not a new^ institution, nor its 
constitution a new organic law. But it is, in the strictest 
and most absolute sense, lineally and organically one with 
that of Israel, founded and perpetuated upon the covenant 
of Sinai. 



424 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM, [Part XV, 



Part XV. 

CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. 

Section LXXXIX. — History of the Rite. 

BUT two of the evangelists, Matthew and Mark, mention 
baptism in connection with the last instructions of 
Jesus; and of these, Mark introduces it in an incidental 
way, as though it had been a matter already understood. 
(Matt, xxviii, 19, 20 ; Mark xvi, 15, 16.) The reason was 
that the apostles were not then first commissioned to baptize. 
On this point, Calvin speaking with reference to the argu- 
ments of the Anabaptists says, '' It is a mistake worse than 
childish to consider that commission as the original institu- 
tion of baptism, — which Christ had commanded his apostles 
to administer, from the commencement of his preaching. 
They have no reason to contend, therefore, that the law 
and rule of baptism ought to be derived from those two 
passages, as if they contained the first institution of it."-'^ 
Upon this, Dr. Dale says, — " Calvin is right in dating 
Christian ritual baptism from the ministry and authority 
of Christ, and not from that of John, even if they were 
'entirely identical, which they are not. The baptism of 
John is Christian baptism, as far as it goes; but it is Chris- 
tian baptism undeveloped in the blood shedding of an aton- 
ing Redeemer, in which shedding of blood, 'for the remis- 
sion of, sins,' ritual baptism has its exclusive ground." 
Again, speaking of the words of Peter, on the day of Pente- 
cost, — " Repent and be baptized," — he asks, — " What was 
this baptism? Was it a Jewish baptism, a ceremonial 
cleansing of the body, merely? Was it John's baptism, a 

•=• Institutes, Book IV, chap, xvi, ? 37. 



Src. lxxxix.] history of the rite. 425 

spiritual baptism (haptiwia metanoias) in wliich no Holy 
Ghost was yet ' poured out,' no crucified Redeemer was yet 
revealed? Was it Christian baptism, the baptism of Christ, 
the crucified, the Risen, the Ascended, the Pourer out of 
the Holy Ghost ?"* In these passages we have a statement 
of differentia upon which the lamented author insists ear- 
nestly, as distinguishing the baptisms named, from each 
other. As to the Jewish baptisms, — those which were ap- 
pointed by the divine law, they were, as we have seen, 
spiritual in the same sense precisely as were the baptisms 
of John and of Christ ; and the latter were and are " a cer- 
emonial cleansiug of the body, merely," in the same sense 
as were the baptisms of the Jews. To this day, " the letter," 
or outward form of Christian baptism is a ceremonial cleans- 
ing of those who are ritually unclean. No otherwise could 
it show forth " the spirit" of the ordinance, which is the 
real purging, by the Spirit, of those who are spiritually de- 
filed. From the beginning to the present day, the ritual 
baptisms always signified, the very same spiritual truths. 
And they w^ere all alike devoid of any spiritual power in 
themselves. 

But let us trace the line of connection between them. 
Very early in the ministry of Jesus, before the imprison- 
ment of John, while the latter was baptizing in Enon, 
" Jesus and his disciples came into the land of Judea ; aud 
there he tarried with them and baptized." But " when the 
Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made 
and baptized more disciples than John, (though Jesus him- 
self baptized not, but his disciples), he left Judea, and de- 
parted again into Galilee." — John iii, 22 ; iv, 1-3. Here, be it 
observed, (1.) that John was the intelligent, faithful and 
inspired forerunner and herald of the Lord Jesus. The 
gospel which he preached \vas that which the Spirit of 
Christ gave him, and the baptism which he adminis- 
tered set forth that gospel in ritual figure. His preaching 

••••Dale's "Christie Baptism," pp. 430, 431. 
36 



426 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Paut XV. 

was summed in one word. "Repent, for the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand." (2.) The Lord Jesus preached the 
very same word, and gave it to the apostles and the seventy 
to proclaim, when he sent them abroad through the laud. 
" Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (3.) There 
is not an intimation in the Scriptures, nor suggestion to 
justify the idea, of the least difference in the form and 
nature of the baptisms at this stage of the history, ad- 
ministered by them respectively. Certainly if there were 
differences, they must have been characterized by a minute- 
ness and subtlety, fit rather to' exercise the ingenuity of 
hair-splitting schoolmen, than to instruct the common peo- 
ple of Judea ; who, upon the supposition of diversity, were 
called to c/ioose hetween the rival baptisms. John's baptism was 
at first into the name of " the coming One," " the Baptizer 
with the Holy Ghost and with fire." Of that baptism his 
was proclaimed to be a symbol. When Jesus came, John 
at once identified him as the coming One, and thenceforth 
his baptism was into the name of Jesus of Nazareth. I do 
not mean that John made use of those phrases. To this 
point we shall come presently. But "John verily baptized 
with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the i^eople 
that they should believe on him which should come after 
him; that is, on Christ Jesus." — Acts xix, 4. The rite 
which he dispensed sealed upon the recipients their profes- 
sion of repentance and faith in Jesus, the Son of God, the 
atoning Lamb, the King Baptizer. In a report of one of 
his discourses, which occupies seven verses of the gospel 
of John, each of these titles and the things implied in 
them is brought out with perfect distinctness. (John i, 
29-36.) That John was ignorant of the precise form of 
crucifixion, as that in which atonement was to be made, is 
possible ; although even there the facts do not warrant the 
confidence of Dr. Dale's assertions. But that he was not 
ignorant of Christ's atoning ofiice, his own words distinctly 
testify. " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away 



Sec. LXXXIX.] H/^TORY OF THE RITE. ^11 

the sin of the world." — John i, 29. (4.) The whole man- 
ner of the narrative from which we learn the fact that 
Christ's disciples baptized, indicates the identity of the 
ordinance as administered by them with that of John. 
The fact is not mentioned for its own sake, but as intro- 
ductory and explanatory of the testimony of John respect- 
ing Jesus. (John iii, 22-30.) In fact, we have no in- 
formation whatever of the nature and meaning of Christ's 
baptism, as thus originated, except in its justly assumed 
identity with that of John. This, the language of John's 
interlocutors implies (lb. 26), and upon the basis of this 
assumption the whole narrative rests. This remark applies 
also to the subsequent statement, — that " the Lord knew 
how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized 
more disciples than John ; though Jesus himself baptized 
not, but his disciples." — John iv, 1, 2. Here the one word, 
*' baptized," without qualification or differentiating phrase, 
is applied to both Christ's disciples and John, and plainly 
identifies the rite administered by them as one and the 
same. That such was the case can not be successfully 
questioned. 

And now, what have we, in the ordinance thus dis- 
pensed by the disciples under the eye, and as a seal to the 
preaching, of Christ, but Christian baptism? True, the 
disciples were ignorant at that time, of the doctrine of the 
cross, which in flict they refused to believe, till their Mas- 
ter was crucified before their eyes. But while the baptism 
was administered by their hands, it was in Christ's imme- 
diate presence, by his authority, and as a seal to the gospel 
which he preached. How then could their ignorance and 
hardness, or that of John, if he be so impeached, change 
the nature of the rite which by Christ's authority they 
both administered? And, especially, how could this be, 
when in fact that baptism, while it presupposed Christ's 
atoning sufferings, yet had no immediate relation to them, 
but to his kingdom and elorv, — the theme of John's 



428 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM, \Vk^T XV. 

preaching, — the one thing in Christ's instructions which 
the apostles gladly received? 

To what extent this baptizing function of the apostles 
continued in exercise during the subsequent ministrj^ of 
Christ, we are not informed. But, the manner in which, 
first and last, the subject is treated by the evangelists im- 
plies that it never was in abeyance. Hence, in his final 
interviews with them, Jesus does not speak of the ordi- 
nance as a novelty, nor as a rite to be reintroduced ; but 
alludes to it as to a familiar subject. In fact, his only re- 
corded references to it, have in view, not the ordinance, in 
itself considered, but iU bestoival on the Gentiles. " Go ye, 
disciple all nations, baptizing them." — Matt, xxviii, 19. *'Go 
ye into all the ivorld and preach the gospel to every crea- 
ture. He that helieveth and is baptized shall be saved, but 
he that believeth not shall be damned." — Mark xvi, 15, 
16. By this decree, the ordinance, which, as we have 
seen, was already divested of its sacrificial elements, was 
released from its peculiar and restricted relation to the 
Jewish people. Heretofore, only the circumcised could be 
admitted to baptism ; and the rite, when administered to 
them, was received as a certificate of title to the privileges 
of the covenant, in connection with the Mosaic ritual and 
the temple service. But, by this decree of Christ, it was 
appropriated to the use of the Gentiles, also ; as certifying 
to them a part in the same covenant, relieved of the en- 
cumbrance of the ritual law. That its administration to 
the converts of Christ's ministry is not mentioned, presents 
no just occasion of surprise, in view of the fiimiliarity of 
the ordinance and the emphasis already given to it in con- 
nection with John's ministry. That Christ's disciples bap- 
tized at all is only known to us by the incidental mention 
in the last of the evangelists. 

The facts here developed are of immense importance in 
their bearing upon our present inquiry. Tlie Lord Jesus did 
not institute baptism, at any time. He recognized it as an 



Sec. LXXXIX.] HISTORY OF THE RITE. 429 

ordinance of God given to Israel ages before, — accepted it 
personally from the hands of John, — immediately appointed 
his disciples to administer it to the Jews in conjunction with 
John, and then, after his resurrection and assumption of 
the sceptre, commanded them to dispense it to the Gentiles 
also. — "All power is given unto me in heaven and earth. 
Go ye therefore and teach all nations baptizing them." 

The rebaptism of the twelve disciples of John, by Paul at 
Ephesus (Acts xix, 1-7), may be thought inconsistent with 
the assertion of the identity of the baptisms of John and of 
the Christian church. But when the facts are considered 
in their true relations, they will appear in perfect harmony 
with all that have been heretofore adduced, and entirely 
consistent with the conclusions thence derived. John was 
the herald of Christ. His preaching and baptism had 
neither significance nor value, except as they directed the 
attention and faith of his disciples to the coming of Christ 
and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which He should ad- 
minister. To the great mass of those who received his bap- 
tism, no profit resulted, because it was not followed up by 
a waiting for Christ's coming, and a devotion to him when 
he was revealed. It effected no actual separation of such 
disciples from the unbelieving mass of the nation. When, 
therefore, the crisis came and the Saviour was crucified, 
they sustained no relation of identity with him and his 
cause ; but were an undistinguishable part of the nation, 
whose rulers betrayed and crucified Him. The baptism 
which they had received was no magical rite, leaving an 
indehble impress on the recipients; but a rational ordi- 
nance, designed to mark and seal a separation and consecra- 
tion unto Christ. Precisely here, was the point of Paul's 
testimony to these men.— "John verily baptized with the 
baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that thoy 
should helieve on him lohich should come after him, that is, on 
Christ Jesus." Where this intent of John's baptism did 
not follow, — where no separation unto Christ was actually 



430 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Part XV. 

effected, the parties remained unclean, with the unclean 
nation. In them was fulfilled the proverb of the son of 
8irach. — "He that is baptized from the dead, and again 
toucheth the dead, Avhat availeth his washing?" — Ecclus. 
xxxi, 30. Such was the case with any of the converts of 
Pentecost, who had been John's disciples. And such evi- 
dently were the Ephesian disciples. They were behevers 
in the Messiah of prophecy, as heralded by John. But 
their faith was weak and supineness prevalent. They had 
not followed up the line of John's testimony, with the zeal 
of a living consecration. The baptism which they had re- 
ceived had effected no separation unto Christ. "When, 
therefore, under the ministry of Paul, they were prepared 
to begin a new life, their consecration was sealed by a new 
administration of the same baptism.* 

That this is a jast view of the case in question farther 
appears from the manner in which it is presented in imme- 
diate connection and contrast with that of Apollos, whose 
story closes the eighteenth chapter of the Acts, as that of 
the twelve opens the nineteenth. Of him it is stated that 
he was "an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures, 
instructed in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in 
the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the 
Lord, knowing only the baptism of John. And he began 
to speak boldly in the synagogue; whom, when Aquila 
and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and ex- 
pounded unto him the way of God more perfectly." — Acts 
xviii, 24-26. The silence, here, on the subject of baptism, 
and the emphasis given to its statement immediately after, 
in the case of the twelve, is pregnant. For, all occurred 
in the same city of Ephesus, where Apollos was instructed 
and preaching just before Paul's coming, and the baptism 
of the twelve. 

Note. — How can we consistently restore excommunicated 
persons without rebaptism ? Is not the prevalent practice a 

*See Alexander on Acts xiv, 5. 



Skc. xc] baptizing into the name. 431 

relic of the opu% operatum lieresy? "If any one assert that in 
the three sacraments, baptism, conjSrmation, and orders, there 
is not a mark imprinted on the soul, — that is a certain spiritual 
and indelible token, whence, it may not be repeated, — let him 
be anathema." — Council of Trent, Sess. vii. Canon 9. Is this 
the faith which we hold? 

Section XC. — ''Baptizing them into the Name." 

*'Aud Jesus came and spake unto them and said, All 
power is given unto me, in heaven and in earth. Go ye, 
therefore, and (matheteiisate) disciple all nations, baptizing 
them (eis) into the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all 
things whatsover I have commanded you; and lo, I am 
with you alway even unto the end of the world." — Matt, 
xxviii, 18-20. 

Here are two things to be considered: — (1) The phrase, 
*'into the name;" (2) "The name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." 

1. *'Into the name." The phrase, "in the name," as- 
found in the common English version, represents three 
distinct forms of expression, in the original, which are 
essentially different in their meaning, and should, there- 
fore, be carefully discriminated. They are "(m) in the 
name;" ''(epi) for the name," and "(eis) into the name." 
The essential idea expressed by the first of these is, repre- 
sentative union, as a person who speaks or acts "in the 
name" of another, identifies himself with that other. 
Thus, — "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name." — John 
xiv, 13, 14, 26; xv, 16, etc. "Ye are justified in the 
name of the Lord Jesus." — 1 Cor. vi, 11. "Giving thanks 
in the name of the Lord Jesus." — Eph. v, 20. "Do all in 
the name of the Lord Jesus." — Col. iii, 17. Hence the 
use of the expression, as signifying, "by the authority of." 
Thus, "I am come in my Fathcrh name, and ye receive me 
not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will 
receive." — John v, 43. "/?i the name of Jesus Christ of 



432 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Part XV. 

Nazareth, rise up and walk." — Acts iii, 6. "I command 
thee, in the name of Jesus Christ, come out of her." — lb. 
xvi, 18. There is but one passage in which this form of 
expression is used in connection with baptizo. Acts x, 48, — 
"He commanded them to be baptized, in the name of the 
Lord." The analogy of the phrase elsewhere, would re- 
quire us to understand it here as meaning, " by the author- 
ity of the Lord." The codex Sinaiticus reads, — "He com- 
manded them (en to 'onomati Ju Xu haptiathenai) , in the name 
of Jesus Christ to be baptized." Cyril of Jerusalem quotes 
the passage in the same order.* Not only does the form 
of the phrase in itself call for this rendering, but the con- 
nection is equally clear, in the same direction. The case 
was the baptism of the house of Cornelius. Peter de- 
mands, — " Can any man forbid the water, that these should 
not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost, as 
well as we?" The point at issue was the admission of the 
Gentile world to a part in the salvation of Christ. Peter 
had on the day of Pentecost testified that it was the Lord 
Jesus by whom the Holy Ghost had been poured out. He 
had been admonished by Jesus in a vision that the Gen- 
tiles were not to be excluded from the blessings of the 
gospel. He now calls the attention of his six Jewish com- 
panions (Acts xi, 12), to the fact that the house of Corue- 
lius was baptized by the Lord Jesus himself, with the 
same Spirit which had been poured upon 'the Jews on 
Pentecost; and with an emphatic pause, challenges objec- 
tion. There being none, the apostle, then, in the name 
and by the authority of Christ, proclaims the doors of sal- 
vation thrown open to the world. He "in the name of 
the Lord Jesus, commanded them to be baptized;" and 
afterward vindicated the action by the demand, "What 
was I, that I should withstand God." — Acts xi, 17. 

Epi^ in this connection, has the general meaning of, be- 
cause of, — on account of, — with reference to,— for ; and the 

*In Dale, Christie Baptism, p. 205. 



Sec. XC] BAPTIZING INTO THE NAME. 433 

phrase as thus constructed means, " for the sake of." Thus, 
" Whoso shall receive one such little child (epi 'onomati 
7nou)jfor my name's sake." — Matt, xviii, 5; Mark ix, 37. 
"They called him Zacharias (epi),for the sake of his fath- 
er's name." — Luke i, 59. " That repentance and remission 
of sins should be preached {e pi) for his name's sake." — Luke 
xxiv, 47. "That they speak henceforth to no man (epi) 
for tJhe sake of the name." — Acts iv, 17. From these illus- 
trations, it will be seen that in connection with baptism, 
the rendering, of epi, — "in the name," — altogether misses 
the idea of the sacred writer. It occurs but once. On the 
day of Pentecost, Peter, in reply to the cry, — '' What shall 
we do?" answered, — " Kepent and be baptized every one of 
you (epi), for Hie sake of the name of Jesus Christ (eis), unto 
the remission of sins." — Acts ii, 38. Jesus had said, "He 
that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved." Peter, 
therefore, tells the multitude, " Eepent and be baptized. 
Do this, in honor of the Lord Jesus ; and unto the remis- 
sion of sins ; since repentance, and obedience shown by re- 
ceiving baptism, are pledges of remission." 

In the text of Matthew, which stands at the head of 
this section, the w'ord is, eis, — "Baptizing them (eh), into 
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Ghost." This is the preposition ordinarily used with rela- 
tion to baptism, both real and ritual. In connection with 
the baptism of the Spirit, its signification is so fully ex- 
plained and illustrated as to admit of no doubt or question. 
They that are "baptized (eii) into Christ" (Gal. iii, 27; 
Rom. vi, 3), are united to him, — "by one Spirit baptized 
(eis) into one body," " the body of Christ." — 1 Cor. xii, 13, 
27. Those who are " baptized (eis) into his death," are 
thereby " dead with him." — Rom. vi, 3, 8. So, it is said 
of the children of Israel that they were " baptized (eis) into 
IMoses, in the cloud and in the sea," as the passage of the 
Red Sea, the destruction of the Egyptians and the deliver- 
ance of Israel by the hand of Moses released them finally 

37 



434 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Pai;t XV. 

and forever from the Egyptian yoke, and united them to 
Moses in subordination to his mediatorial authority. " They 
beheved the Lord and his servant Moses." — Ex. xiv, 31. 
This is viewed by the apostle as a figure of the "work of 
grace by which the people of Christ are released from Satan's 
bondage and brought under his saving scepter; and he, 
therefore, uses the same form of expi^essiou, '* Baptized into 
Christ," "Baptized into Moses." 

The style in which the real baptism is thus spoken of 
is a key to the meaning of the Lord Jesus, in his language 
concerning the ritual ordinance. The visible church is the 
representative and type of that invisible body of Christ, the 
members of which are incorporated therein by the baptism 
of the Spirit. Baptism with water is a symbol, merely, of 
that spiritual grace. The recipient may be truly united to 
the Lord Jesus. But such union is not produced by the 
ritual ordinance. The eifect can ascend no higher than 
the cause. A symbolic baptism can accomplish no more 
than a symbolic union, a union in outward semblance and 
name. Its ground is profession of the name of Christ, and 
the characteristic designation of those who have received 
it is, — that they "have named the name of Christ" — (2 
Tim. ii, 19), that is, they have professed to take hold of 
his covenant, and have thereupon had his name named 
upon them. They are Christ's. If, therefore, baptism 
" into Christ" by the Spirit, means spiritual union with 
Christ, and with his invisible body, then, manifestly, bap- 
tism with water ^^ into the name of Christ " can mean noth- 
ing else but ritual identification with his name, and with 
that visible body which is known by his name, and em- 
braced by profession in the bonds of his covenant. To 
effect such union is all that Christ's ministers can do. It 
is what they are commissioned to do. The rest remains 
with the Great Baptizer himself. Intimately related to this 
subject is that remarkable word of God which instructed 
Aaron and his sons to bless Israel with that threefold ben- 



Sec. XC] BAPTIZING INTO THE NAME. 435 

ediction which is believed to refer to the doctrine of the 
glorious Trinity. "The Lord bless thee and keep thee. 
The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious 
unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, 
and give thee peace," — and then adds, — " And theij shall 
'piii my name upon the children of Israel, and / will bless 
them."— Num. vi, 23-27. 

The form of expression used by the Lord Jesus, — '' hap- 
tizing them into the name," is a perpetual rebuke of every 
doctrine or pretense which would attribute to the rite, in 
itself, any higher or other efficacy than that of changing 
the outward and professed relation of the baptized to 
Christ and the Godhead. The view here presented is 
further involved in the relation between baptism and dis- 
cipleship, intimated in the words of Jesus, — "Disciple all 
nations, baptizing them into the name." Christ came as 
the revealer of the Godhead, the Prophet of Israel, as well 
as her royal Priest. The preaching of the gospel is the ful- 
fillment of his prophetic function, and those whether Jews 
or Gentiles, who accept it are to be enrolled as disciples of 
Christ, by being baptized into the name or profession of 
the faith of the triune Godhead, as revealed by him, in 
the gospel. It will thus be seen that the translation in- 
variably given to the phrase in question, in our common 
Euglish vci-sion, entirely fails of exhibiting a true idea of 
the meaning of the original. See Matt, xxviii, 19 ; Acts 
viii, 16; xix, 5; 1 Cor. i, 13, 15. Baptizing "m the 
name," can only mean, dispensing the rite by the au- 
thority of the Persons named. The command is, to "bap- 
tize into the name." 

2. "The name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost." In other places, baptism is said to be 
"into the name of the Lord Jesus." — Acts ii, 38; viii, 
16 ; xix, 5. Nor are the other Persons of the Godhead 
ever mentioned in such connection with the real baptism. 
That is always described as being into Jesus Christ. Rom. 



436 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Part XV. 

vi, 3 ; 1 Cor. xii, 13, 27 ; Gal. iii, 27. How is this di- 
versity of expression to be explained ? It is abundantly 
plain, as respects the real baptism. In it, each Person is 
signally present, in appropriate relation. In it, Christ, the 
Eoyal Administrator, by whom the Spirit is poured out, 
is also the Head into which by that one Spirit all are bap- 
tized as members. The Spirit appears as the Spirit of life 
in Christ Jesus, the Renewer and Sanctifier. And as to 
the Father, " Ye are all the children of God, by faith in 
Christ Jesus ; for as many of you as have been baptized 
into Christ have put on Christ." — Gal. iii, 26, 27. "As 
many as received him to them gave he power to become 
the sons of God, even to them that believed on his name." — 
Jno. i, 12. In a word, thus is fulfilled the petition of 
Jesus. "As thou Father art in me and I in thee, that 
they also may be one in lis. ... J in them and iiiou in 
me, that they may be made perfect in one." — John xvii, 
21, 23. By the real baptism, therefore, the believer is 
united to each Person of the Godhead, — a fact, neverthe- 
less, expressed by baptism into one, Jesus Christ. 

The same principle governs the forms of expression 
used with reference to ritual baptism. Jesus Christ is the 
"Word of God, and can not be truly apprehended except in 
that relation. " No man hath seen God at any time. The 
only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he 
hath declared Him." — John i, 18. He came to make 
known the Father. He returned to impart the Spirit. 
And, as he was thus apprehended by the apostles, a bap- 
tism into his name was a baptism into the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Spirit. It only ceases 
to be so, when Jesus ceases to be appreciated as him in 
whom " dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." — 
Col. ii, 9. 

It is an illustration of the essential deficiency of the 
theory of immersion that it has no explanation for the di- 
versity of expression here considered. 



Sec. XCL] ''HE THAT BELIEVETW 437 

Section XCI. — "-He that helieveth and is baptized." 
In the great commissiou, as recorded by Mark, Jesus 
said to his disciples, "Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is 
baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be 
damned." — Mark xvi, 15, 16. Dr. Dale denies that ritual 
baptism is here referred to. — " We accept the real baptism 
by the Holy Spirit as the sole baptism directly contem- 
plated by the passage ; in general, because it meets in the 
most absolute and unlimited manner, as a condition of sal- 
vation, the obvious requirement on the face of the passage, 
having the same breadth with belief, and universally pre- 
sent in every case of salvation."* To this view the objec- 
tions are obvious and conclusive. (1.) The clause which 
the author has emphasized with Italics, is inaccurate. The 
baptism with the Holy Ghost is not "a condition of salva- 
tion;" but is the very salvation itself. It is the casket in 
which are bestowed repentance, faith, remission of sins, 
justification, adoption, sanctification, the resurrection and 
eternal life. (2.) The interpretation would not only make 
this baptism a condition of salvation, but puts it in the po- 
sition of a co-ordinate but secondary condition with faith. — 
" He that helieveth and is baptized." Whereas faith, as 
just remarked, is one of the immediate phenomena of this 
baptism. (3.) The text as thus explained represents the 
Lord Jesus as commissioning his ministers to offer salvatioi; 
to sinners iipon conditions one of which is to be performed 
by them ; but the other belongs to his own peculiar pre- 
rogative, to which, in no circumstances, can they assume 
an efficient relation. It interprets tlie message to be 
preached thus: "Whoever believeth shall be saved; pro^ 
vided I, Jesus, shall see fit to baptize him !" 

The text is a statement to the apostles, and througn 
them to the ministry in all ages, of their duties and the 

* Christie Baptism, p. 393. 



438 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Part XV. 

results of their labors. With baptism as a ritual ordinance 
of the gospel they had been familiar from the beginning 
of John's ministry, and of Christ's in coincidence ^Yith it. 
They had been fully instructed, as to the baptism of the 
Spirit, which Christ was about to dispense, and which they 
were to await ; and as to the typical relation to it which 
the ritual ordinance sustained. They are now commanded 
to go forth and preach that gospel ; not, as heretofore, to 
Israel, only, but to every creature, in all the world; and 
whereas, until now, none could be baptized, — none could 
receive the token of the covenant, except those who were, 
by circumcision, identified with Israel after the flesh, — he 
indicates the removal of that restriction, — "Go teach all 
nations, baptizing them." Baptizing them with water, 
which, only, they could administer; and in token of that 
profession of faith, of which only they could take cogni- 
zance. It is in view of these things, that the declaration 
is made, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; 
but he that believeth not shall be damned." The repetition 
shows that the emphasis of the passage rests on believing. 
" You are to preach, and baptize those "vvho profess to be- 
lieve. But let all, both preachers and hearers, beware of 
trusting in the baptismal shadow. He that believeth and is 
baptized, shall be saved. But he that believeth not, — his 
baptism will not avail, — He shall be damned." Assuredly, 
had the Lord Jesus been stating conditions of salvation, as 
concerning baptism, he knew how to set it on both sides 
of the alternative. 

Section XCII. — The Formula of Baptism. 

It is proper and necessary that such words be used in 
the administration of Baptism, as shall give an intelligent 
announcement of the nature and intent of the ordinance. 
For this purpose nothing can be more appropriate than the 
formula in universal use, in all the churches. But the 
question arises whether the words thus employed were given 
to be uttered as a formula necessary to the rite. 



Sec. XCII.] THE FORMULA OF BAPTISM. 439 

1. There is uotbiug whatever iu the language of the 
Lord Jesus, oii the subject, to give couutenauce to the sug- 
gestion in question. "Go ye, and disciple all nations, 
ba2)tizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things 
whatsoever I have commanded you." We have already 
seen that " baptizing into the name" means, not the utter- 
ance in the baptism of any words or formula ; but instruc- 
tion and consecration to the faith and service of the Triune 
God, identified with the baptismal rite and signified by it. 
But if such be the meaning of our Savior's words, it ex- 
cludes the idea in question. "Baptizing them into the 
name," then, means something very different from "utter- 
ing the name." In fact, the more carefully the language 
in question is examined, in itself, in its immediate connec- 
tion, and in its relation to the general scope of the gospel 
and its history, the more evident will it appear that it was 
not words that were present to the mind of Jesus, or by 
him put into the mouths of his ministry, but the great 
doctrine of baptism, in which the whole gospel is summed, — 
that doctrine which was heralded by the baptist, and ex- 
pounded by the Lord Jesus in his discourse and prayer at 
the supper. One who should teach that the Holy Spirit 
is not a coequal Person of the Godhead, or that the Lord 
Jesus is not the eternal and coequal Son, might administer 
the rite, in the use of the formula. Yet would it not be 
baptism in the intent of Jesus as here set forth. 

2. The silence of all of the evangelists except Matthew 
as to the words in question, is wholly inconsistent with the 
supposition that they were given as a formula. The im- 
portance of the rite is of common agreement. And resting 
as it does as an obligation on every soul that hears the 
gospel, it is the first and foremost of all the practical du- 
ties of those who receive it. If, therefore, the formula 
was now given as an element in the administration of the 
ordinance, it is of the first and universal moment. How 



440 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Part XV. 

then is' it possible for three of the evangelists to have ig- 
nored it, in their several versions of the gospel. Evidently 
they attached to it no such significance 'as obtains with 
those who hold it as of the essence of baptism. 

3. The fact that it is not once used or alluded to, in 
the whole subsequent history and epistles, is conclusive. 
Those records are a testimony; — as much by silence, often, 
as by utterance. But, on this subject, they are not silent. 
On the day of Pentecost, Peter calls upon the inquirers to 
be baptized "(epi) for the name's sake of Jesus Christ.'* — 
Acts ii, 38. The Samaritans and the twelve disciples of 
John at Ephesus were baptized "into the name of the 
Lord Jesus." — Acts viii, 16; xix, 5. And Paul distinctly 
implies that the Corinthians were baptized into the same 
name. "Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? 
or, were ye baptized into the name of Paul?" — 1 Cor. i, 
13. How these facts are consistent with obedience to 
Christ's command we have already seen. The only inter- 
pretation w^hich will harmonize the record is deduced from 
that doctrine of baptism which has been unfolded in these 
pages. He that is spiritually baptized into Jesus Christ, 
thereby receives the Spirit and is united in Christ to the 
Father. He is baptized into the Three. 

Here, the doctrine of immersion is radically defective. 
The form may be administered with the utterance of the 
names of the Trinity. But its doctrine contains no testi- 
mony to the Triune, nor recognition of any Person of the 
Godhead. It relates altogether to the humanity of Christ, 
whose burial it represents. 

Section XCIII. — The Administration on Pentecost. 

On the day of Pentecost, in reply to the cry of the 
repentant multitude, — "What shall we do?" Peter said, 
"Kepent and be baptized every one of you (epi to 'ono- 
mati), for the name's sake of Jesus Christ (eis) unto the re- 
mission of sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 



Sec. XCIII.] THE RITE ON PEKTECOST. 441 

Ghost. For the promise is to you, aod to your children, 
and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our 
God shall call. . . . Then, they that gladly received his 
word were baptized; and the same day there were added 
unto them about three thousand souls." — Acts ii, 37-41. 
Dr. Dale denies this baptism to have been ritual, and 
demands, — "Was there a visible Christian church in exis- 
tence at Pentecost? Was there any one competent to 
organize a Christian church before Pentecost? Did not 
the divine Head of the church himself furnish the mate- 
rials for a church organization, officers, and members, ' that 
day?' Was there a Christian organization effected, as well 
as a tri-millenary baptism administered ' that day?' Were 
they organized and then baptized, or baptized and then 
organized?"* These questions, coming with the authority 
of the learned writer, are entitled to respectful considera- 
tion. And although they have, in effect, been answered, 
already, a few words will here be added, in direct response. 
The Jewish church, as organized, according to the law of 
Moses, under the ministry of the elders, was the Christian 
church, on the day of Pentecost. But as that church had 
become largely corrupt and apostate, and its rulers had 
betrayed and crucified the Lord Jesus, her King, a separa- 
tion had become necessary, and the preaching and baptism 
of the apostles was the means a2:>pointed by Him for elim- 
inating the apostate elements. The. one hundred and 
twenty who remained together in Jerusalem after the 
ascension were but a small part of believing Israel, even 
then ; for the Lord Jesus was seen of above five hundred 
brethren at once, after his resurrection. (1 Cor. xv, 6.) 
But they, or the apostles alone, or one of them, would 
have been abundantly sufficient as a center for gathering 
the believing from among the apostate. They stood pre- 
cisely as did Moses in the midst of the congregation of 
Israel, at the time of the apostasy of the golden calf, say- 
* Dale's Christie Baptism, p. 102. 



442 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Part XV. 

ing, — "Who is on the Lord's side? Let him come unto 
me." — Ex. XXX ii, 26. Hence the style in which the histo- 
rian of the Acts writes of the converts of Pentecost. 
"Then they that gladly received his word, were baptized; 
and the same day there were added about three thousand 
souls." — Acts ii, 41. They are not said to have been 
"added to the church;" for they were the church, obeyiug 
the call of her Head, — " Come out from among them, and 
be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean 
thing." — 2 Cor. vi, 17. They are, therefore, said to have 
been "added (to them)," — that is, to the apostles; or more 
literally "associated together," — joined in one body. By 
that act, they stood forth, the church of Jerusalem, di- 
vested of the unbelieving elements. Accordingly, we read, 
immediately after, that "the Lord added to the church 
daily such as should be saved." — Vs. 47. For all the pur- 
poses of the occasion, on the day of Pentecost, there was 
no farther organization necessary than that which existed 
in the sanhedrim of the apostles, men inspired of the 
Holy Ghost, and endowed by the Lord Jesus with author- 
ity for presiding over his church in this transition period 
of her history. 

The baptism of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost has 
been already illustrated fully. That there was also a rit- 
ual baptism, with w^ater, I venture to regard as equally 
certain. (1.) We have just seen that the apostolic com- 
mission contained a command to baptize the disciples. 
Peter, therefore, in inviting his hearers to repent and be 
baptized, was simply following the literal terms of his in- 
structions. And had he omitted baptism, — that ritual 
baptism which alone the apostles could administer — ^he 
would have been acting in direct violation of his commis- 
sion. (2.) In his exhortation, the baptism is secondary to 
repentance. This is the proper order of ritual baptism, 
which is predicated on profession of repentance. But it is 
the reverse as to the real baptism, which precedes repent- 



Sec. XCIII.] THE RITE OX PENTECOST. 443 

ance aud is its cause. (3.) The language used in describing 
the result of the exhortation is conclusive. — "Then they 
that gladly received his word were baptized." The glad re- 
ception of the word is stated as the antecedent ground of 
receiving the baptism; the reverse, again, of the order in 
real bai)tism. (4.) In the case of Cornelius aud his house, 
Peter based their baptizing with water upon the fact that 
the spiritual phenomena were identical with those of the 
day of Pentecost. "The Holy Ghost fell on them as on 
us at the begiuuing." — " Can any man forbid the water, 
that these should not be baptized, which have received the 
Holy Ghost, as well as we?" — Acts x, 47; xi, 15. This 
argument would have been wholly inappropriate had there 
been no water baptism on Pentecost. 

But Dr. Dale urges another objection. — " AVhile the 
reception of these thousands that day into the church by 
dipping into water, is improbable to absurdity, for reasons 
both moral and physical, their reception by any ritual form 
whatever, is, for moral considerations mainly, not without 
embarrassment. These thousands were all personally stran- 
gers to the ai^ostles, mostly from foreign lands, Parthians, 
Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Cretes, Arabians, etc. 
An hour before, they were mockers of the work of the 
Holy Ghost, and declared the apostles to be drunk. Now, 
is there moral fitness in the reception of such men into the 
church, by a rite without any personal intercouree, to learn 
their moral condition? But the passage states that the 
baptism was grounded in the ' glad reception of the word' 
preached. If the baptism was the work of the apostles, 
then this knowledge must also be the knowledge of the 
apostles ; and if so, then it must have been obtained, either 
by divine illumination, or by personal intercourse touching 
repentance and faith, the knowledge of Christ and the duty 
of baptism ; then, how could the addition of three thousand 
be made * that day?'"^' The theory that, the baptism here 

*'* Christie Baptism," p. 158. 



444 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Part XV. 

in question was spiritual and not ritual, is, here, self- 
condemned, by the statement which truly represents it to 
have been ' ' grounded in the glad reception of the word 
preached." That word was, "Repent and be baptized." 
Its glad reception, therefore is equivalent to the exercise of 
repentance, which is the immediate fruit of the spiritual 
baptism, and therefore of necessity follows, but can not 
precede it. The baptism, therefore, which was "grounded 
in the glad reception of the word," can have been no other 
than ritual baptism. The fundamental fallacy of the argu- 
ment lies in the assumption, which we have before noticed, 
that the Pentecostal transactions were incident to the organ- 
izing of a new church ; instead of beiug, as we have shown, 
the separating of the existing church from the corrupt and 
ungodly elements which had taken possession of it. 

It is asserted respecting the three thousand that, "an 
hour be-fore, they were mockers of the work of the Holy 
Spirit." A kindred statement is frequently heard, in illus- 
tration of the fickleness of the multitude, — that those who 
yesterday filled the air with shouts -of " Hosanua !" to-day 
cry, "Away wdth him." Both representations are errone- 
ous, and tend to obscure the true state of the case. In the 
Pentecostal scene, there were "some" mockers, and possi- 
bly, nay, probably some of these w^ere made trophies of 
grace that day. But to represent the assembly as char- 
acteristically of that class, involves an utter misconception 
of the case as expressly stated by the sacred historian. He 
represents them as " Jews, demui men, out of every nation 
under heaven." — Acts ii, 5. It was they, who came throng- 
ing to the assembly of the apostles. It was characteristically 
they who gladly received the word and were baptized. Nor 
is the language of Peter to them incongruous to this view. 
" Him ye have taken, and by wicked hands, have crucified 
and slain." — v. 23. Their rulers had done it, and the 
whole people were responsible and polluted with the crime 
of his blood, until they purged themselves, by separation 



Sec. XCIII.] THE RITE ON PENTECOST. 445 

and baptism. So, the multitude who cried, " Hosauna!" were 
" the multitude of the disciples," from Galilee. (Luke xix, 
37 ; compare lb. xxii, 59.) For fear of the people, the con- 
spirators seized Jesus by betrayal, by night ; and the cry 
against him was uttered, at. the instigation of the rulers 
and priests, by their retainers and dependents. (Mark xv, 
11.) ''It was early," when they brought Jesus before Pi- 
late. (John xviii, 28.) And it is probable that the sen- 
tence was already passed and Jesus in the hands of the ex- 
ecutioners, before the Cialileaus who were accustomed, at 
the feasts, to encamp on Olivet, had any knowledge of the 
fearful tragedy of that day. These facts are all of import- 
.ance, in order to a just conception of the real nature of 
the separation which began in Jerusalem on the day of 
Pentecost, and ultimately extended throughout Judea, Gal- 
ilee, and Samaria, and to all parts of the world, where a 
synagogue of the Jews was to be found. We do no serv- 
ice to the truth, by underestimating the number of those 
who in that day, w-ere waiting for the consolation of Israel, 
and "gladly received the w^ord" of the rising of the Sun 
of righteousness, in the person of the Lord Jesus. 

From the foregoing considerations, w^e conclude it to be 
certain that the three thousand converts of the day of Pen- 
tecost were baptized with water. The order of occurrences, 
as it appears from the record was this: The preaching of 
Peter was accompanied with the promised power, the bap- 
tism of the Spirit being bestowed upon his hearers, by the 
Lord Jesus. By that baptism was given to them repent- 
ance and remission of sins. (Acts v, 31.) Upon their 
correspondent profession, they were baptized with w^ater ; 
and thereupon, they received the gifts of tongues and of 
pfophecy, in fulfillment of the promise of Christ (Mark 
xvi, 17), and in accordance with the assurance given them 
by Peter; — "Repent and be baptized, and ye shall re- 
ceive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is to 
you and to your children," — the promise, to Avit, which he 



446 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Part XV. 

had before quoted from Joel, in explanation of the Pente- 
costal signs. 

Section XCIV. — Symbolic Meaning of this Baptism. 

The rite of immersion is inseparably identified with the 
theory that ritual baptism is designed to symbolize the 
burial of the Lord Jesus. By the advocates of this theory, 
the baptism administered to the converts of Pentecost is 
held to have been the original of the institution. By all, 
that baptism must be recognized as a most conspicuous and 
normal exemplification of the rite. We are perfectly willing 
to stake the whole issue upon the question of the symbolic 
meaning of the ordinance, as determined by the Scriptural ^ 
statements concerning that baptism. 

It has been shown that the Old Testament baptisms 
symbolized the gift from on high of the Spirit of life from 
God. We have seen that John administered his baptism 
as an announcement and symbol of that which the coming 
One should dispense, — the baptism of the Holy Ghost. 
We have heard the Lord Jesus appropriate to himself the 
testimonies of John, and promise their fulfillment, in terms 
by which the baptism to be administered by him was dis- 
tinctly identified as the antitype of that of John. " John 
truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized w^ith 
the Holy Ghost." — Acts i, 5. We have seen the promise 
fulfilled, and heard the testimony of Peter, that therein 
was accomplished the prophecy of Joel, — a prophecy in 
which and the kindred language of the other prophets, the 
baptisms of the Old Testament were so clearly interpreted. 
We have seen that his baptizing office was the great end 
of Christ's exaltation, and the consummate function of his 
scepter, — that by which he begins, carries on, and accom- 
plishes the salvation and the glory of his people ; and that 
this, his exaltation and saving power, were, on the day of 
Pentecost, preached as the express ground of the call to 
repent and be baj^tized, for his name's sake. In view of 



Skc. xciv.] the meaning of it. 447 

these facts, how is it possible, by argument or by sophistry, 
to avoid the conclusion that the ritual baptism to which 
Peter's hearers were thus called, was designed to signify 
that real baptism with which it was thus so closely identi- 
fied ? But the evidence is more specific. 

1. The sum and substance of the preaching of John 
and of Jesus was the same, and reported by the evangelists 
iu the same words: — " Repent, for the kingdom of heaven 
is at hand." 

2. In both cases, this preaching was accompanied with 
a ritual baptism, which was as identical as was the preach- 
ing. Else, have we a house divided against itself, — the 
one doctrine, attested by two rival rites, which, under one 
and the same name, competed for acceptance with the Jews! 

3. Of this baptism, Paul says, that *' John verily bap- 
tized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the peo- 
ple, that they should believe on Him which should come 
after, that is on Christ Jesus." — ^Acts xix, 4. Of it, Mark 
and. Luke state that "John did baptize in the wilderness 
and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of 
sins." — Mark i, 4; Luke iii, 3. And John himself de- 
clares, — "I indeed baptize you with water, unto repent- 
ance : but He . . . shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, 
and with fire." — Matt, iii, 11. It thus appears that this 
baptism was identified with a doctrine the cardinal elements 
of which are (1) repentance, and (2) faith in the Lord Jesus ; 
as the conditions precedent ; and (3) the remission of sins, as 
the result. These were what the ordinance meant. From 
them it took its name, — "The baptism of repentance for 
the remission of sins." 

4. On the day of Pentecost, this, precisely, was the 
preaching and baptism of Peter. "Repent, and be bap- 
tized every one of you, for the name's sake of Jesus Christ, 
unto the remission of sins." — Acts ii, 38. 

5. Peter had already proclaimed that the Lord Jesus, 
" being by the right hand of God exalted, and having re- 



448 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Part XV. 

ceived of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, hath 
shed forth this, which ye now see and hear." — lb. 33. 
A few days afterward, he explained more precisely to the 
rulers, the significance of this great fact. — " Him hath God 
exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, 
for to give to Israel repentance and (aphesin Jmmartidn) re- 
mission of sins." — lb. V, 31. 

From these things it irrefragably follows, (1) that 
whereas, Christ's baptizing office is fulfilled by shedding 
down his Spirit upon his people, the baptisms of John and 
the disciples prior to the day of Pentecost, as well as that 
administered by Peter and the twelve on that day, were 
all proclaimed symbols of this the great reality ; (2) that, 
while the intent and end of Christ's baptism is, through 
the bestowal of the Spirit, to give repentance, faith, and 
the remission of sins — the other baptisms and conspicuously, 
that of the apostles on Pentecost, were designed to signify 
and bear witness to that very thing. Not only are these 
conclusions manifest and incontrovertible ; but by them 
and the facts on which they rest the idea of the burial of 
Christ, as included in the symbolism of baptism, is not 
merely ignored, but utterly excluded, as incongruous and 
unmeaning, in that connection. 

This impregnable conclusion is further fortified by the 
fact already shown, that in this meaning of the rite and 
in it only can be reconciled the two forms of expression, 
" Baptizing into the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost;" and, — ^' into the name of the 
Lord Jesus." Baptism shows forth the Triune Godhead 
united in the salvation of man, and uniting the saved with 
that blessed Godhead. 

Section XCV. — TJw Mode of the ritual Baptism on Pentecost. 

As to the mode of the baptism of that day the evidence 
is not doubtful. The assembled throng were "Jews, de- 
vout men out of every nation," — men whose clierished faith 



Skc. XCV.] the mode on PENTECOST. 449 

and hopes all centered on Moses and the covenant made 
and sealed with their fathers at Sinai. The baptismal seal 
of that covenant, perpetuated in tlie sprinkled water of 
separation, was familiar to them everywhere. They were 
conversant with the prophecies which assured them that 
in the latter days God would "sprinkle clean water upon 
them," — that the Messiah would " sprinkle many nations," 
and ** pour out of his Spirit upon all flesh." They are 
now told by the apostles that these prophecies are announce- 
ments of the baptizing office of the Lord Jesus, — that he, 
being by the right hand of God exalted, and having re- 
ceived of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, had, 
in the exercise of his baptizing office, shed forth this, 
which they saw and heard. And, in response to their 
penitent cry, they are required to be "baptized for the 
name's sake of the Lord Jesus." Is it possible to avoid 
the conclusion that the baptism thus propounded was the 
sprinkled baptism which was familiar to them all ? Or, are 
we to accept the opposite assumption? Then must Peter 
have explained to the multitude. — " Our fathers, at Sinai, 
were sealed to the covenant with the sprinkled blood and 
water. In all generations of our race, the same seal has 
been familiar, in the same office ; as it is, this day, to you. 
The prophets have explained the affusion of water as be- 
ing a symbol of the official work of the Messiah. In that 
office and work, the reality of the Sinai rite is to-day ful- 
filled. And now, ye are to be baptized into the name of 
the Lord Jesus; but with another- baptism, — a baptism 
dislocated from all relation to the past, — a baptism severed 
from all analogy, even, or association of ideas with that of 
the Spirit, which is this day dispensed by the Lord Jesus. 
He baptizes by outpouring; but ye must be dipped. He 
baptizes by a pouring out of the Spirit, of which, in the 
prophecies, and in the baptisms of our fathers, living water 
was the constant symbol; but to you, dipped in that living 
water, it is to become the symbol of the sepulchre of 

38 



450 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Part XV. 

Joseph, in which the body of Jesus was laid. His bap- 
tism gives repentance and remission of sins; and the bap- 
tism to be received by you might seem to mean this very 
thing ; for it is conditioned upon repentance and is ' unto 
remission.' But it means not that; but the burial of the 
dead body of Jesus." 

And now, where shall the water be found, for the im- 
mersion of these thousands ? And by what miracle shall the 
rite be performed, " decently and in order," within the hours 
of that day? For, not only is the record specific, which 
limits the time, — but the supposition of a delay implies the 
encumbrance of after time, of which each day had its own 
duties and labors, its. own converts and baptisms. It is 
demonstrably possible for the twelve apostles to have bap- 
tized the entire multitude by sprinkling in the ordinary 
manner in which we administer the rite within four or five 
hours. But such was not, as I conceive, the manner of the 
administration. . No mere rite could without disparagement 
endure such repetition for hour after hour. The reitera- 
tion must obscure and obliterate the spiritual significance 
of the rite. The attention of the witnesses would become 
exhausted and diverted, and the monotony of the form 
would inevitably become a weariness and an offense. By 
such a manner of observance, the very intent of the ordi- 
nance would be lost, and this as much in one form, as in 
another. 

But we are not reduced to the necessity of encounter- 
ing these obvious embarrassments. We have seen the mil- 
lions of Israel baptized by Moses, in the hours of one morn- 
ing, they receiving the rite either collectively in one body, 
or by tribe-families or tribes. It is very probable that this 
was the manner in which the rite was ordinarily adminis- 
tered by John to the throngs that attended on his ministry, 
and by the disciples of Christ, when he "made and bap- 
tized more disciples than John." The Jews were fiimiliar 
with the use of the hyssop bush as appointed in the law, 



Skc. xcvl] the mode in other cases. 451 

for adniiuisteriug the rite. There was nothiug in the na- 
ture of the ordinance, nor in the circumstances cf the oc- 
casion, to render inappropriate or improbable a resort to 
that mode. On the contrary, every consideration, of con- 
venience, of dignity, propriety and edification, united to 
commend it as the most suitable way, the water being 
s})rinkled with a hyssop bush, and the recipients of the 
rite presenting themselves in companies of suitable size, by 
scores or by hundreds. Thus was set forth by a joint bap- 
tism the doctrine of Paul. "By one Spirit are we all 
baptized into one body." — 1 Cor. xii, 13. 

Such is the conclusion to which the analogy of the 
Scriptures points. Such, I doubt not, was the form of 
administration that day. For the present purpose, how- 
ever, this much is clear and sufficient, — that the record 
of Pentecost contains nothing incongruous to the previous 
history and doctrine of baptism, — that on the contrary, 
the Spirit-baptism of that day and all the circumstances, 
concur to the same conclusion which the foregoing history 
indicates. ^^ Not immersion; hut affusion" — is the unambig- 
uous voice of Pentecost. 

Section XCVI. — Other Cases Illustrating the Mode. 

The next case that illustrates the mode, is the baptism 
of the eunuch. "As they went on their way, they came 
unto a certain water. And the eunuch said, See, here is 
water, what doth hinder me to be baptized? . . . And he 
commanded the chariot to stand still; and they went down 
both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he 
baptized him. And when they were come up out of the 
water." — Acts viii, 36-39. To what has been said already 
concerning this passage, one or two points only need be 
added. Dr. Dale has pointed out the fact that the verb 
(Icatebesan) , "they went down," has primary reference to 
the chariot, out of which they descended. He refers to 
the Septuagint of Judges iv, 15, "And Sisera (Icatebe) 



452 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Part XV. 

stepped down from his chariot;" and to Matt, xiv, 29, — 
"Peter (Icatahas) stepping down from the boat walked on 
the water, to go to Jesus." The essential point, however, 
is that the descent was not the baptism, — that, with the 
style of clothing, then as now, worn in the east, nothing 
would have been more natural and convenient than that 
they should have stepped into the water, as the most con- 
venient Avay of access, even though the baptism was to be 
performed by sprinkling or pouring. "The place" (perioche, 
the section), which the eunuch was reading, begins with 
Isa. lii, 13, and includes the w^hole of liii. It is a contin- 
uous prophecy of the Messiah, under the designation of 
God's servant. In the fifty-third chapter, down to the 
eleventh verse the pronoun "/ie"is used to designate the 
subject of the account. It refers back to lii, 13, to which 
we must look for the theme of the prophecy. "Behold 
my servant shall deal prudently." When, therefore, the 
eunuch read liii, 7, 8, — "He w^as led as a sheep to the 
slaughter," and asked, "Of whom speaketh the prophet 
this?" Philip must of necessity hav€ turned back to the 
beginning of the section, for the answer. In so doing, he 
finds this among the first things said of the person de- 
scribed: — "As many were astonied at thee, his visage was 
so marred more than any man, and his form more than 
the sons of men, . . . so shall he 8prin/cZe many nations." — lii, 
14, 15. This prophecy, thus coinciding with that of Joel, 
which was the text of Peter's Pentecostal discourse, could 
not be overlooked by Philip, in his instructions to the eu- 
nuch. The latter, although himself a Jew, was identified 
with a Gentile nation. He was chamberlain, or treasurer, 
to Candace, the queen of Meroe, in upper Egypt.* The 
prophecy, therefore, "So shall he sprinkle many nations" 

* Pliny (Hist. Nat. vi, 35) states this kingdom of which 
Meroe, on an island in the Nile, was the chief city, to have 
been " now for a long time," governed bj"- queens, who trans- 
mitted to each other the name of Candace. 



Sec. XCVL] THE MODE IN OTHER CASES. 453 

could not fail to arrest his attention and elicit the story 
of Pentecost, as the beginning of redemption to the Gen- 
tiles. That, with Christ's baptizing office brought thus into 
view, his ordinance concerning ritual baptism should be 
announced, was not only a necessary result of the circum- 
stances, but was an essential part of that office which 
Philip was to perform. "Disciple all nations, baptizing 
them." In favor of the hypothesis that the eunuch was 
immersed, there is nothiug but the fact that they went 
down to, or into the water. On behalf of his being 
sprinkled, is the explicit testimony of the prophet as to 
the manner of the real baptism, of which the ritual ordi- 
nance is the symbol. 

2. The baptism of the apostle Paul next presents itself. 
Of it we have two brief accounts which are mutually sup- 
plementary. (Acts ix, 10-20; xxii, 12-16.) After his 
vision of Jesus, on the way, he had lain for three days in 
the house of Judas, in Damascus, blind, fasting and pros- 
trate. To him Ananias was sent and said to him — "And 
now, why tarriest thou ?" Why liest thou thus prostrate 
and desponding? " Arise, and be baptized, and wash away 
thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord." — Acts xxii, 16. 
Literally "(^vios^os, baptisai, kai apolusai), Rising, he bap- 
tized, and let thy sins be washed away, calling upon the name 
of the Lord," Says Alexander, "Be baptized, is not a pas- 
sive, as in ii, 38, but the middle voice of the same verb, 
strictly meaning, ' baptize thyself,' or, rather, ' cause thy- 
self to be baptized,' or suffer (some one) to baptize thee. 
The form of the next Terb [apolusai'] is the same, but can 
not be so easily expressed in English ; as it has a noun de- 
pendent on it. This peculiarity of form is only so far of 
importance as it shows that Paul was to wash away his 
sins in the same sense that he was to baptize himself; i. e, 
by consenting to receive both from another. As his body 
was to be baptized by man ; so, his sins were to be washed 
away by God. The identity, or even the inseparable union, 



454 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Part XV. 

of the two eftects, is so far from being here afBrmed, that 
they are rather held apart, as things connected by the nat- 
ural relation of type and antitype, yet perfectly distin- 
guishable in themselves, and easily separable in experi- 
ence."* The exhortation, "Let thy sins be washed away," 
is intimately dependent upon the next clause, — "calling 
upon the name of the Lord." — Calling not as a mere rev- 
erential invocation ; nor as a mere profession or act of faith. 
But "calling on him to purge away thy sins with the wash- 
ing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; and 
accepting the baptism of water as the symbol and pledge 
of the other." 

Li the parallel account, it is stated that "he received 
sight forthwith Qmi anastas, ehaptisthe) and rising up, ivas 
baptized" — Acts ix, 18. Thus, in both of these accounts, 
the same form of expression is used as to the manner of 
the baptism, — a form which indicates that the administra- 
tion was immediate, upon his rising from his couch. " Ris- 
ing up, be baptized." " And he, rising up, was baptized." 
In the original, the force of the expressions is even stronger, 
to the same effect. The circumstances coincide with this 
interpretation. The prostration, resulting from the vision by 
the way, from the blindness, and the three days in which' he 
was " without sight, and neither did eat nor drink" (Acts ix, 
9), must have been very great ; and it was not until after his 
baptism that "he received meat and was strengthened." — 
lb. 19. There is no intimation of leaving the place. There 
is no word of such preparation as an immersion would re- 
quire. But the whole case stands in the expression twice 
employed, from which but one meaning can be deduced, — 
that he was baptized immediately, in his chamber, as he 
rose from his couch, and stood before Ananias. Whatever 
the mode, it can not have been immersion. 

It has been asserted that Paul's baptism was not ritual 
but spiritual. The supposition is encumbered with the 

* Alexander, in loco. \ 



Sec. XCVL] THE MODE m OTHER CASES, 455 

same difficulties which attend the like idea respecting the 
baptism of Pentecost. The occasion of Ananias being sent 
to him was the fact attested by the Lord Jesus, — " Behold 
he prayeth." — Prayer so attested lacked neither repentance 
nor faith. He had, therefore, already received the baptism 
of the Spirit, — that is his renewing grace ; although not his 
miraculous gifts. Moreover, the baptism Avhich he received 
in his chamber was something to which the ministry of 
Ananias was requisite, and for which his rising from his 
couch was preparatory. None of these thiugs harmonize 
with the idea that it was the baptism of the Holy Ghost. 
Nor was it implied in the language of Ananias, — "That 
thou mightest receive thy sight and be filled with the Holy 
Ghost." — Acts ix, 17. With this is to be compared the 
previous statement concerning him, made in vision by Jesus 
to Ananias, " He hath seen in a vision a man named Ana- 
nias coming and jyuiiiwj his hand upon him, that he might 
receive his sight." — lb. 12. It was through the laying on 
of the hands of Ananias that Paul's sight was restored and 
the miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost conferred upon him. 
Such was the ordinary manner, as we have already seen, 
of the imparting of those gifts ; which w^as undoubtedly the 
nature of the present endow^ment of Saul of Tarsus. 

3. The baptism of the house of Cornelius is equally 
unfavorable to the idea of immersion. (Acts x, 44-48.) 
The words of Peter admit of but one construction. "Can 
any man forbid (to udor) the water; that these should not 
be baptized." — Acts x, 47. We have already pointed out 
that this language means that the water, as an instrument, 
was to be brought to the place, in order to the baptism. 
Moreover, the baptism of this company, thus, with water, 
Avas by Peter expressly predicated upon the fact that they 
had been already baptized with the Holy Ghost, by his 
outpouring upon them. "The Holy Ghost fell upon all 
them which heard." "On the Gentiles also was pcmred 
out the gift of the Holy Ghost." " Can any man forbid 



456 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM, [Part XV. 

the water, that these should not be baptized, which have 
received the Holy Ghost as well as we?" — Acts x, 44, 45, 47. 
And lest there should be any possible doubt about the 
meaning of all this, Peter explains himself to the church 
in Jerusalem, — " Then remembered I the word of the Lord, 
how that he said, John indeed baptized with w'ater, but ye 
shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost." — lb. xi, 16. Here 
again the facts are decisive m favor of afiusion. 

4. The Philippian jailer and his family are the only re- 
maining iustance in which illustrative circumstances are 
recorded. (Acts xvi, 25-34.) As bearing upon the mode, 
these are, that at midnight, in the jail, upon his professed 
repentance and faith, the jailer was baptized, "he and all 
his straightway." — Acts xvi, 33. This too was before he 
had taken Paul and Silas out of the jail proper, into his 
own apartments. The impossibility of the rite, administered 
in such circumstances, having been immersion, would seem 
evident. Nor is it admissible, as proposed by Baptist 
writers, to suppose that the jailer and his family with the 
prisoners went out to the river and were there immersed. 
The suggestion is not only contradicted by the record, 
which describes the baptism as having been (parachrema) 
*' straightway," with neither time nor action intervening. 
But it would have been an act of official dereliction, in- 
volving peril to the jailer's life, and rendering the message 
of Paul to the magistrates, the next day, an impudent pre- 
tence. They sent the sergeants to the jailer, saying, "Let 
these men go." "But Paul said unto them, They have 
beaten us openly, uncondemned, being Komans, and have 
cast us into prison. And now do they thrust us out pri- 
vily? Nay, verily, but let them come themselves and 
fetch us out." — lb. 37. Is this the language of men who 
had already stolen out of the prison, by night? 

We have thus passed in review every instance of 
Christian baptism mentioned in the New Testament, in 
which any particulars are given. The only other cases 



Skc. XCVII.] baptized into MOSES. 457 

named are the Samaritans (Acts viii, 12, 13, 15), Lydia 
(lb. xvi, 15), the Corinthians (lb. xviii, 8; 1 Cor. i, 14-17), 
and the twelve disciples of John at Ephesus (Acts xix, 
1-5). Of them we are only informed that they were bap- 
tized. As to the cases which we have examined it is cer- 
tainly remarkable and significant that with the exception 
of the eunuch, they each present physical difficulties in the 
way of immersion, serious if not insurmountable ; and that 
in the excepted case, the utmost that can be said is, that 
nothing appears to render immersion physically impossible ; 
while the connection of the occasion points distinctly to a 
sprinkled baptism. 

The cumulative argument arising out of these baptisms 
is overwhclmiug. They can not have been by immersion. 

Section ^CYU.— ''Baptized into Moses" 

The baptism of Israel into Moses, is pertinent here, as 
illustrating the apostolic style of conception and language 
on the subject. "All our fathers were under the cloud, 
and all passed through the sea ; and w^ere all baptized (eis) 
into IMoses, (en) by the cloud and (eii) by the sea." — 1 Cor. 
X, 1, 2. 

AVc have already seen the typical relation which Moses 
and Israel, and the covenant with them sustained to the 
Lord Jesus and the true Israel, and the better covenant, 
as expounded by Paul to the Hebrews. The language here 
cited from the same apostle derives its form from the same 
conception. Israel in the bondage of Egypt, — Moses sent 
to them as a deliverer, — the passage out of the land of 
bondage, through the Ked Sea, — the destruction of Pharaoh 
in the sea and the cutting off thus of Israel from all de- 
pendence or subjection to him, — their consequent faith in 
Moses and submission to his authority, — the covenant made 
with them through him as Mediator, — their nourishment 
in the wilderness on the bread of heaven, and the water 
from the Eock, — and their final passage through the Jor- 



458 CHRISTIAN" BAPTISM. [Part XV. 

dan and entrance into the promised land, — are the elements 
of a typical system the antitypes of which are to be sought, 
not in the visible church and its ritual ordmauces, but in 
Christ and his body, the invisible church, and the spiritual 
and heavenly realities which it enjoys. According to this 
conception, the " baptism into Moses" finds its antitype in 
the baptism into Christ, by which his people are emanci- 
pated from the bondage of Satan and brought under the 
yoke of Christ. And as that baptism is instrumentally 
accomplished by the Spirit, whereby they all are baptized 
into one body of which Christ is the Head, so the baptism 
of Israel was instrumentally eifected " hy the cloud and hy 
the sea ;" they being by the cloud protected from the Egyp- 
tians and directed through the receding sea; while *' the 
Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians, through the 
pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the Egyptians, 
and took off their chariot Avheels," and the returning sea 
swallowed them up. — Ex. xiv, 23-28. Here was an im- 
mersion. But it was of the Egyptians. Here was a bap- 
tism, — of the children of Israel, — into Moses, — not into 
water, — not into cloud, or sea or both together. There 
were not two baptisms, but one, and in order to make it 
an immersion "in the cloud and in the sea," the baptism 
"into Moses" must be obliterated. The Baptist figment 
which we have seen stated by Dr. Kendrick, of the "double 
Avail of water rolled up on each side, and the column of 
fiery cloud stretchiug its enshrouding folds aboA^e them," is 
not merely an idle imagination. But it is an imagination 
in direct and palpable contradictioii to the record of Moses. 
The Israelites Avere indeed under the cloud. But it Avas he- 
fore they entered the sea, and not during their march through 
it. "The Angel of God Avhich Avent before the camp of 
Israel, removed and AA^ent behind them ; and the pillar of 
the cloud AA^ent from before their fkce, and stood behind 
them. And it came between the camp of the Egyptians 
and the camp of Israel ; and it Avas a cloud and darkness 



Sec. XCVIL] BAPTIZED INTO MOSES, 459 

to them ; but it gave light by night to these ; so that the 
one came not near the other all the night. And Moses 
stretched out his hand over the sea .' . . and the waters 
were divided. And the children of Israel went into the 
midst of the sea." — Ex. xiv, 19-22. Thus, before the sea 
was divided, Israel were " under the cloud," as it passed 
back from their front, to become an intercepting barrier 
between them and the pursuing host. But, during the 
march through the sea, the cloud was between the two 
hosts, and not ''enshrouding" Israel above. Thus, as by 
the touch of Ithuriel's spear, the figment of immersion 
vanishes in the presence of the word of truth, and in its 
stead appear the ransomed tribes marching upon the sands 
between walls of water, miles apart, the open heavens 
above them and the cloud moving as a protecting curtain, 
in their rear. The attempt to find immersion here, is futile. 
That the preposition, en, is rightly here translated, %, 
as indicating the instrumental cause, in the baptism, is 
illustrated by an example a little farther on in the same 
epistle. "-Bi/ one Spirit, are we all baptized into one 
body." — 1 Cor. xii, 13. Here, Christ is the Baptizer, the 
Spirit is the instrument, and union with Christ and his 
body the result. So, of Israel, Jehovah was the Baptizer, 
the cloud and the sea were the instruments, and union with 
Moses the result. Just before, they had been in a state of 
open mutiny. (Ex. xiv, 11, 12.) But now, says the record, 
" the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the 
Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the 
sea-shore. And Israel saw that great work which the Lord 
did upon the Egyptians, and the people feared the Lord, 
and believed the Lord and his servant Moses." — lb. 30, 
31. Their changed state of mind was attested by the song 
of their triumph which rang out over the unconscious and 
now peaceful waters. "Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath 
triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he 
thrown into the sea." — lb. xv, 1-21. Thus have we a sig- 



460 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [Paut XV. 

nal example of such a change of state or experience as 
even Dr. Conant admits to have been designated by the 
word, baptizo. From under the power and fear of Pharaoh, 
they came into the trust and obedience of Moses. They 
were " baptized into Moses." The only intimation of in- 
strumental mode in this baptism, to be found in the Scrip- 
tures, occurs in the Psalmist's vivid description of the 
scene. "The clouds poured out water, the skies sent out 
a sound, thine arrows also went abroad.*' — Ps. Ixxvii, 17. 



Sec. XCVIII.] CHRIST AND THE CHILDREN. 461 



Part XVI. 

THE FAMILY AND THE CHILDREN. . 

Section XCVIII. — Chrui aiid the Children. 

AT this stage of our inquiry, we note the following 
points which have important bearings upon the rela- 
tion of the children to the church. (1.) We have seen 
that, in the establishing of the covenant with Abraham, — 
the promises of which were blessings to the natural off- 
spring of the patriarch, and through them, salvation to 
the world, — its seal was set upon all the males of his house- 
hold, — through whom the descent was to be counted, — at 
the age of eight days. (2.) We have seen that in the Si- 
nai covenant, by which in fulfillment of the promises to 
Abraham, the church was constituted in the family of 
Israel, the same fundamental principles of family unity 
and parental headship were recognized and incorporated in 
the constitution of the church ; and that in accordance 
therewith, the children and bondservants, both male and 
female, were included in its terms, with the family head ; 
endowed with all its rights and privileges ; bound under its 
responsibilities; and sealed with its baptismal seal. (3.) 
We have seen that it was into this church, as thus con- 
stituted and existing, and without change in its constitu- 
tional principles, or form of organization, that through the 
ministry of the apostles, the Gentiles were graffed ; thus 
fulfilhng the promise to Abraham, that in his seed should 
all families of the earth be blessed; a promise fulfilled 
not only in salvation accomplished through the promised 
Seed of Abraham, but in the reception thus of the Gen- 
tiles into the bosom of the church of Israel. 



462 THE HOUSEHOLD. [Part XVI. 

It now remains to be ascertained whether there is any 
thing in the principles of the gospel, as set forth in the 
New Testament, in the practical rules therein recorded, or in 
the facts of its history, to require or justify the extruding 
of the children from the place and privileges hitherto en- 
joyed ; — whether there is any thing to lead us to the con- 
clusion ihat the coming of Christ has straitened the grace 
of God, and withdrawn from the babes of us Gentiles that 
privilege of acceptance which was enjoyed by the little 
ones of Israel,' from the day of the covenant at Sinai. 

1. As the place of the children was originally conferred 
and secured by express statute and repeated enactments of 
confirmation, we have a right to expect the abrogation 
of the privileges thus established to be accomplished in 
terms as specific and imperative as were the laws by which 
they were conferred. But no one has ever pretended to 
produce such a statute of abrogation. Confessedly the New 
Testament is absolutely silent as to such an act, — a silence 
fatal to the theories which deny a place to the babes in 
the family of God. 

2. The facts and principles set forth in the New Testa- 
ment supply no argument for the exclusion of the children. 
First, is that touching incident which is recorded with 
more or less fullness in each of the synoptical gospels. In 
reply to the question who of the apostles should be greatest 
in the kingdom of heaven, Jesus, being in a house in 
Capernaum, — probably in the house of one of them, sev- 
eral of whom lived there, — he "called a little child unto 
him and set him in the midst of them," — "and (eiutghalis- 
amenos) having folded it in his arms, he said unto them," 
" Verily I say unto you. Except ye be converted, and be- 
come as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom 
of heaven. Whosoever, therefore, shall humble himself as 
this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of 
heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in 
my name receiveth me." — Matt, xviii, 1-5 ; Mark ix, 36 ; 



Skc. XOVIII.] CHRIST AXD THE CHILDREiV. 4G3 

Luke ix, 46-48. With tliis is to be connected that kindred 
fixct wliich occurred a few days afterward, and is also re- 
corded in each of the three synoptical gospels. ''Then 
were there brought unto him little children, that he should 
put his hands on them and pray ; and the disciples rebuked 
them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children and forbid 
them not to come unto me ; for of such is the kingdom of 
heaven. And he laid his hands on them, and departed 
thence." — Matt, xix, 13-15. Mark and Luke add that he 
Said, " Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive 
the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter 
therein. And {enagkalisamenos) folding them in his arms, he 
put his hands upon them, and blessed them." — Mark x, 
13-16 ; Luke xviii, 15-17. Of these little children, Luke 
tells us that they were (brephe) babes. That these incidents 
in the life of our Savior were of special significance is indi- 
cated by the fact that they are both given by each of the 
evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. As to their mean- 
ing, — (1.) These children all were, at the time, actual mem- 
bers of that visible kingdom of God the church of Israel, 
in the bosom of which Jesus himself lived and died. (2.) 
That church was the type and representative of the invis- 
ible church and kingdom. (3.) Of all members of the vis- 
ible church, Jesus selects the little child of the first inci- 
dent and the babes of the second, as the fittest types or 
representatives of the temper and spirit which will have 
admittance and honor in the heavenly kingdom, (4.) He 
was much displeased, that his disciples should attempt to 
prevent their being brought, in their unconsciousness and 
helplessness, into his personal presence, for recognition and 
a blessing from him. (5.) Both the child in the house, and 
the babes brought to him, he folded in his arms, and upon 
the latter he laid his hands and blessed them. He was the 
great Shepherd, as himself testifies, — "I am the good 
Shepherd." — John x, 11. Of him the prophet wrote, — 
" He shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them 



464 THE HOUSEHOLD. [Pakt XVI. 

in his bosom." — Isa. xl, 11. And we ask, — Cau auy one 
venture to deny that, by these acts, so distinctly referring 
to the prophecy, Jesus designed to recognize and claim the 
babes as lambs of his fold? As before remarked, these 
babes were undeniably members of the church, at the time 
of these occurrences. If the Lord Jesus desigued to leave 
them in undisturbed possession of the rights and privileges 
heretofore enjoyed, with his benediction added thereto, 
all this is clear and intelligible. But, if they were to 
be deprived and excluded, how are these things to be 
reconciled ? 

Another incident, in circumstances even more signifi- 
nlficant, presents itself. After his resurrection, Jesus met 
with his disciples at the Sea of Galilee. " When they had 
dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, 
lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, 
Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, 
Feed my lambs." — John xxi, 15. Peter was present in 
the house in Capernaum, when Jesus took the child in his 
arms. Nay, it is not improbable that it was Peter's house, 
and Peter's child. He was present when the babes were 
brought for blessing, and saw and heard all that then oc- 
curred. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, — the chief 
apostle of the circumcision. When he received this charge 
from the Master, in which were commended to his love 
and care, jir^i, the lambs, and afterward the sheep ; and 
when he pondered this charge and legacy, in the light of 
the fifteen centuries during which the place of the children 
had been unquestioned and unquestionable, and in remem- 
brance of those demonstrative facts whicli he had seen and 
heard, — would he understand it as implying a command to 
purge and renovate the fold, by the exclusion of the lambs? 
And when, a few days after, or, possibly on this very 
same occasion, he as the apostle through whom the doors 
of the gospel wxre to be opened to the Gentiles, with the 
rest, received that great command, — "Go disciple all na- 



Sec. XCVIIL] CHRIST AND THE CHILDREN. 465 

tions, baptizing them," — are we to conceive it possible that 
he understood it to mean that he must be very tender of 
the Jewish lambs, bringing them into the fold and school 
of Christ, but must drive out the children of the Gentiles 
as unclean? 

3. Under the ministry of the apostles, the Gentiles 
were called and graffed into the church of Israel. In the 
church, thus constituted as already shown, some congrega- 
tions were composed of Jews alone, some, of Gentiles, and 
some, of the two classes associated together; but in them 
all Jewish influences were pervasive and paramount. Now, 
is it to be imagined that without a word of command from 
Christ or the apostles, the Jewish behevers would unani- 
mously, gratuitously, and in silence, surrender the place of 
their children in the church, just at the moment when the 
privileges thereto incident had become so much more 
manifest, by the coming of Christ, and the brightness, by 
his rising, shed upon the gospel day ? And even if such a 
thing could be imagined possible, what else would it have 
been but a wicked apostasy and rejection of the grace given 
them? But, that no such apostasy did take place, is as- 
suredly testified by the silence of the record, and by all 
the circumstances. That, in the churches of the circum- 
cision, and among Jewish believers everywhere, the children 
occupied their old status is beyond controversy or question. 
Of this, their circumcision is of itself conclusive proof. 
And as, from the days of Abraham, that rite certified 
them seed of the patriarch and heirs of the promises, — 
and at Sinai they were introduced, by baptism, into the 
pale of the church and the privileges of that covenant, — 
so their continued enjoyment alike of the privileges and the 
seals must stand forever certain, till some prophet shall 
arise to tell us when, and how, and for what cause, they 
were divested of rights once bestowed by Him whose "gifts 
and callings are without repentance." 

And if, by a special clause in the very covenant of 



466 THE HOUSEHOLD. [Part XVI. 

Sinai itself, grace to the Gentiles was reserved, in har- 
mony with abundant grace to Israel, the baptism of Israel's 
babes into the fold of that covenant, that day, was a fore- 
tokening and pledge of the same grace to the children of the 
Gentiles, when the times of the Gentiles shall have come. 
They are not the seed of Abraham, and therefore receive 
not the seal of his covenant in their flesh. But baptism is 
theirs, — the seal of the Sinai covenant, in which, now, the 
rights of the Gentiles are equal. *'For there is no differ- 
ence between the Jew and the Greek : for the same Lord 
over all is rich unto all that call upon him." — Rom. x, 12. 

Section XCIX. — "^/se were your Children unclean hut noiv 
are they Holy." 

We have the express testimony of inspiration, to the 
children's right witbin the pale of the church. Says Paul 
to the Corinthians, — "The unbelieving husband is sancti- 
fied by the w^ife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by 
the husband. Else were your cbildren unclean; but now 
are they holy." — 1 Cor. vii, 14. The significance of this 
declaration, as concerning the children, depends upon the 
meaning of the words, unclean (akathartoi) , and holy (Jiagioi), 
Both of them come into the New Testament, from the Sep- 
tuagint version of the Old. In the Greek of that version, 
the word (alcathartos) does not appear in the books of Mo- 
ses until we come to the laws of ritual uncleanness and 
purifying, which have been so largely discussed in these 
pages. Then, beginning with the fifth chapter of Levit- 
icus, it occurs in that book in about eighty-seven places, in 
all of which it designates the ritually unclean ; being ap- 
plied alike to things and persons. In Numbers and Deu- 
teronomy, it appears about thirty times, in the same sense. 
In the entire Old Testament, the word is used about one 
hundred and forty times ; and with the exception of half a 
dozen passages in which it indicates the moral ofiensiveness 
of sin, it is invariably employed in one and the same 



Sec. XCIX.] YOUR CHILDREN HOLY. 467 

sense, — to designate persons and things that by virtue of 
ritual defilements were excluded from the pale of the cov- 
enant and the sanctuary. If we add to this the related 
noun (akatharsia) the force of these considerations is greatly 
increased. It, in like manner, first occurs in Leviticus, as 
the designation of the uncleannesses which were described 
by the adjective (akathartos) , unclean. It occurs about fifty 
times, and with a few exceptions in which it describes the 
vileness of sin, is constantly used in the ritual sense. 

The other word (Jiagios) holy, has a history and meaning, 
equally clear and well defined. It has primary reference 
to the sum of the divine perfections, in view of which God 
is designated, the Jioly One. Thence, it is transferred to 
designate those moral attributes in men which are after the 
likeness of God's holiness ; as, in the admonition which is 
often repeated in the books of Moses, " Be ye holy, for I 
am holy." Again, it is used to denote the relation sus- 
tained to God by things devoted to his use or service. 
Thus, the tabernacle and all its parts and furniture were 
holy. In this sense, the word Avas used in the covenant 
with Israel. *' Ye shall be unto me a holy nation (ethnos 
hagion.") — Ex. xix, 6. The acceptance of this covenant, 
and the seal of baptism by which it was confirmed estab- 
lished Israel as " holy" unto the Lord. Prior to that cov- 
enant the word had never been applied to men. But from 
that transaction forward Israel was recognized in that char- 
acter. Thus, alluding to the covenant, Moses says to them, — 
'* Thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God ; the Lord 
thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto him- 
self above all people that are upon the face of the earth." — 
Deut. vii, 6. Upon this title and the covenant ground of 
it, Moses insists with great emphasis, recurring to the theme 
again and again. (See Dent, xiv, 2, 21 ; xxvi, 19 ; xxviii, 
9.) It is in view of this covenant provision that the dis- 
tinctive appellation of Israel in the prophets is, " the holy 
people ;" and to the same source is to be referred the famil- 



468 THE HOUSEHOLD. [Part XVI. 

iar designation of " saints," that is, holy ones, which is con- 
stantly employed, especially in the Psalms. Thus, the Lord 
says in Ps. 1, 5, — "Gather my saints together unto me; 
those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice." 
Here, not only is the title used, but the ground of it is 
stated. It is that public profession and covenant of which 
sacrifice was essential as a seal, and incorporated as such m 
the baptismal rite. 

Such is the testimony of the Old Testament, respecting 
these words. The church of Corinth was composed largely 
of Jews, who as we have seen still maintained the ordi- 
nances of the synagogue after as well as before their con- 
version to Christ. In those assemblies, James declares that 
"Moses of old time hath in every city, them that preach 
him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day." — 
Acts XV, 21. The Corinthian disciples, therefore, never 
attended those services without hearing the words in ques- 
tion used; and used in this continual sense of ritual un- 
cleanness and ritual purity. 

In the New Testament, the words in question are em- 
ployed in strict accordance with the Old Testament usage. 
But as the ritual law here sinks into comparative obscurity, 
akathartos, more frequently means the loathsomeness of sin. 
Of the twenty-eight places in which it is found, it in 
twenty, describes ^^ unclean spirits," or demons. But when 
the question arises of the right of the Gentiles to a part 
with Israel, in the covenant and the church, the ritual 
meaning of the word, again comes forward. Peter in his 
vision pleads that he had " never eaten any thing common, 
or unclean." — Acts x, 14, The lesson w^hich that vision 
taught him was, that he '* should not call any man com- 
mon or unclean." — lb. 28. And he afterward said of the 
house of Cornelius that God "put no difference between 
us and them, (katharisas) cleansing their hearts by faith." — 
lb. XV, 9. Except the place in question, in which the re- 
lation of the children to the church is in view, and that 



Sec. XCIX.] YOUR CHILDREN HOLY. 469 

of Peter, conceruiug the like relation of believing Gentiles, 
the word is invariably used in the New Testament to desig- 
nate that moral character of which ritual uncleanness was 
the figure. 

So, too, as to (hagioi) ''holy" or " saints" — it is the peculiar 
and distinctive appellation in the New Testament, as in the 
Old, for those whom we would call " members of the 
church.'' In the Acts of the Aj^ostles, some half a dozen 
times, the title of " disciples," is used ; once, Peter employs 
the name of "Christian" (1 Pet. iv, 16); and Paul once 
sj^eaks of "the believers." (1 Tim. iv, 12.) But, with 
these exceptions, the appellation universally used is (hagioi) 
"saints." It thus occurs about fifty-six times, of which 
forty are in the epistles of Paul, the author of the passage 
in question. In fact, this is the designation which he 
uniformly employs in this very epistle and his second 
to the same church to designate the members of the 
church. " Dare any of you, having a matter against 
another, go to law before the unjust and not before the 
saints r — 1 Cor. vi, 1. " As in all the churches of the 
saints." (lb. xiv, 33.) "Paul . . . unto the church of 
God which is in Corinth, with all the saints which are in all 
Achaia." — 2 Cor. i, 1. The source of this title, moreover, 
as derived from the Sinai covenant, is indicated by Peter, 
who quotes the terms of that covenant and applies them to 
the New Testament church. " Ye are a chosen generation, 
a royal priesthood, a holy nation (etlinos hagion), a peculiar 
people." — 1 Peter ii, 9. As in the Old Testament, so in 
the New, the word, higios, invariably means, either, that 
holiness which is essential in God, and which, in his crea- 
tures is a bond of consecration to him ; or, the characteristic 
of persons and things separated by a peculiar dedication and 
appropriation to his use and service. 

The alternative to which the facts reduce us, is this : — 
that Paul, master as he was of the Mosaic system and of 
the language in which it is recorded, — in his reference to 



470 THE HOUSEHOLD. [Part XVI. 

the children, used the words, akathartoi, and, hagioi, in their 
famiHar ritual signification; or that he meant to deceive 
his readers. For, that the heirs of the covenant were in 
fact a holy people to God, was an express and fundamental 
specification in the covenant. And that the children were 
comprehended in this provision was no more questionable 
than was the existence of the covenant itself. Whatever 
therefore the meaning of Paul, his readers could not possi- 
bly understand his language in any but one way: — ''Else 
were your children excluded from the ]pale of the covenant ; but 
now are they embraced in it." 

The attempt is made to evade the overwhelming force 
of the facts, on this point, by a most extraordinary inter- 
pretation. It is asserted that Paul means, — "Else were 
your children illegitimate, but now are they legitimate." 
The doctrine thus attributed to the apostle, is in the first 
place, false and abominable in morals. It is an assertion 
that no child is legitimate, unlesi^one or other of its 
parents be a Christian. In the second place, it is an inter- 
pretation false to the whole testimony of the Scriptures as 
to the meaning of the words. In all the multitude of 
places in which they are to be found, there is not one to give 
the slightest color of sanction to it. It is nothing less 
than a desperate and unscrupulous attempt to silence the 
voice of' God's testimony because it is in terms of grace to 
our children. 

Paul's language is, in fact, an application tb the chil- 
dren, of the same general principle of divine grace, which 
governed him in the circumcision of Timothy. The He- 
brew blood of Timothy's mother was held to entitle him to 
part in the Abrahamic covenant, although his father was 
a Greek. So, Paul pronounces the children of believers, 
Gentiles and Jews, to be clean, as comprehended in the 
Sinai covenant, and the gospel church, even though one 
parent should be an unbeliever. 

It is only to be farther considered, that as those only 



Six. C] HOUSEHOLD BAPTISMS. 471 

-who are baptized of the Spirit are spiritually clean, so the 
Scriptures know nothing of ritual cleanness, except by 
baptism with water; and that the command, " Go, disciple 
all nations, baptizing them," makes the baptizing co-exten- 
sive with the discipleship, — that is, with admission to the 
school of Christ, and pale of the covenant. 

Section C. — Household Baptisms. 

We have seen the grace of God expressed toward the 
children of his people, under the Mosaic economy, by their 
being embraced with their parents in the terms of the cov- 
enant. We have seen their admission thereto announced 
and confirmed by the seal of baptism. We have seen no 
token of the withdrawal of that grace by the Lord Jesus 
when in person on earth. We have heard, on the con- 
trary, his confirmation of it in terms as strong as language 
can furnish. We have seen that same covenant, its terms 
unchanged, and its seal the same, thrown open, through 
the ministry of the apostles, to the Gentiles, and heard the 
testimony of the apostle, that our children are not un- 
clean, — offensive to God, but holy, — acceptable before him. 
We now proceed to consider the facts and principles in- 
volved in the household baptisms, which are described in 
the New Testament. First, however, it is proper to make 
an important correction in the aspect in which the subject 
is commonly viewed and discussed. The principle which 
the Scriptures set forth and establish is niDt that of the 
baptism and membership of infants, as such. The funda- 
mental element of the visible church, as conceived and 
set forth, in Scripture, is not the individual, but the family. 
As God planted the 'earth in families, so in the covenant 
with Abraham he laid down the family society as the foun- 
dation stone, on which, at Sinai, the church was builded ; 
and hence the organization of the church of Israel upon 
the family principle, and its government by the eldership, 
the representatives of its families. Under this constitution, 



472 THE HOUSEHOLD. [Part XVI. 

the infants, were of course included. But tlie designation 
and discussion of the subject, under their name, as if it 
were a question of infant baptism and infant membership, 
distinctively, does injustice to the subject, as it leaves out 
of sight and practically excludes the fundamental principle 
involved. That principle is, parental headship, and the 
consequent grace of God bestowed on the families of his 
people, — their children and bond servants, — as identified 
in and represented by them. 

1. The first case of household baptism mentioned is 
that of Lydia, — " whose heart the Lord opened, that she 
attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul. And 
when she was baptized, and her household, she besought 
us saying. If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, 
come into my house and abide there." — Acts xvi, 14, 15. 
Here, the essential facts are, (1.) that the house of Lydia 
were by the inspired historian, recognized in no other capacity 
than as being (oikos antes) her house. Their number, their 
names, their ages, their distinctive relation to her, whether 
as children or servants, their several or joint sentiments 
toward the gospel, — on all these points he is silent. The 
one single fact to which he directs our attention is Lydia's 
property in them. (2.) Of Lydia alone it is said that the 
Lord opened her heart; and upon this fact exclusively is 
predicated her baptism and that of her house. Should any 
surmise that her house also believed, we do not object, pro- 
vided the surmise is not to be made an essential part of 
the record. If it be insisted that they believed and there- 
fore were baptized, we reply that had such been the con- 
ception of the sacred writer, it would have been as easy, 
and far more important for him to have stated their faith, 
as he has recorded their baptism. The supposition that 
they did in fact believe, only renders his silence on that 
point the more significant. (8.) These facts occurred in the 
ministry of that same Paul whom we have just seen to 
testify that the children of believers are holy. In a word 



Skc. C] household baptisms. 473 

Luke states tlic fact of the baptism, and the ground of it. 
Lydia believed, and she was baptized and her house. Be- 
cause of her faith, to lier and to her house the old, the 
everlasting, covenant was fulfilled, — " to be a God to thee 
and to thy seed after thee." 

2. The baptism, w^hich soon followed, of the jailer and 
his house is equally explicit on this point. He* said to 
Paul and Silas, " Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And 
they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt 
be saved, and thy house. And they spake unto him the 
word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house. And 
he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their 
stripes, and was baptized, he and all his straightway. And 
when he had brought them into his house, he set meat be- 
fore them, and (egaUiasato i)ctnoihi, pepisteukos to TJwd,) re- 
joiced Avith his house, he believing in God." — Acts xvi, 
30-34. Here, again, we have a construction which re- 
markably ignores the question whether his house, as well 
as he, believed. It may be assumed that they w^ere all of 
an age to hear and understand the gospel. It may be 
assumed that they, so understanding, believed also. But 
it may not be assumed that such knowledge and faith were 
the ground of their baptism, because the sacred writer puts 
it upon a diflferent ground. It was as identified with him — 
as belonging to him, that they w^ere included in the rite. 
*' He was baptized, — he and all /iis." Thus their relation to 
him is the defining term. *'He and all that were his." — 
He and none hut his ; and they because they were his. 
Such is the force of the expression as it stands. In the 
same direction looks the closing expression. " He rejoiced 
with all his house, — he believing." That his house did not 
believe we neither assert nor deny. The point of import- 
ance is, that their faith is no element of the case, as stated 
on the record, upon which was grounded their baptism. 
The alternative is clear and inevitable. Either ho, only, 
of all his house did in fact lielieve ; or, if his household 

40 



474 THE HOUSEHOLD. [Part XVI. 

shared in his faith, the remarkable manner in which, in the 
narrative, they are associated with him in his baptism and 
joy, but omitted from the statement which describes him 
alone, as believing, was an express and designed intimation 
that his personal faith was the controlling element in the 
case, according to the terms of the everlasting covenant, — 
*' to be a God to thee, and to iliy seed after thee," and the 
assurance given him by Paul, — "Believe, . . . and thou 
shalt be saved and thy house." He w^as recognized and 
dealt with as the head of his house, precisely as was 
Abraham. 

3. Paul declares that he "baptized (ton Stephana oikon) 
the house of Stephanas." — 1 Cor. i, 16. Here, again, there 
is no discrimination of individuals. The characteristic upon 
which he predicates the baptism is the relation which he 
indicates. It was the house of Stephanas, as such, whom 
he baptized. 

Respecting these cases, it may be admitted that if taken 
separately, they would constitute no conclusive evidence to 
the present purpose. But such is not their position. They 
stand as one element in a series of facts and principles 
which together present a cumulative argument conclusive 
and unanswerable. These begin with the Abrahamic cov- 
enant and the family principle there established. They in- 
iuclude the Sinai constitution, in which the same principle 
was ineffaceably engraved. They comprehend the opening 
of the doors of the church thereon founded, to the Gentile 
world, with this principle unimpaired. They reveal the 
love of Christ to the babes, in the history and instructions 
of his personal ministry, and in his parting commission to 
Peter. They hold up the testimony of Paul, that the 
babes of believers are "saints." It is in the presence of 
these great facts, inscribed in letters of light upon the rec- 
ords of fifteen hundred years ; and in the absence of any 
thing whatever to contravene their testimonies, or to set 
aside the conclusions thence following, that the household 



Sec. C] household BAPTISMS. 475 

baptisms in questiou are to be considered. The cliildren 
and household were once unquestionably embraced in God's 
covenant with his church. " EverlastiTig ," was by His finger 
written on the face of that covenant. (Gen. xvii, 7.) In its 
terms, as announced at Sinai, place for the Gentiles was ex- 
pressly reserved; and upon their ultimate admission, no 
trace of change, in these respects, appears in the record. On 
the contrary, in the cases just examined, we have the most 
conclusive evidence, in view of the foregoing facts, that 
the position of the family has not been changed by the 
coming of Christ, and the giving of the gospel to the Gen- 
tiles. It still continues a unit under the parental head ; 
and the same grace which blessed the seed of Abraham 
because of his faith, — the same which, at Sinai, embraced 
the children with their parents, in the covenant and the 
fold, still extends those privileges to the children of Gen- 
tiles who believe. They are holy. 



476 CONCLUSION, 



Conclusion. 

AND now, at the goal, we turn to survey the broad 
field of our explorations, and to note the accumulated 
results. From this vantage point, many things appear in 
a light of peculiar instructiveness and beauty. But one 
feature stands out in proportions of loftiness, and glory, 
which cast all else into the shade of insignificance. As 
with rapt spirits, we gaze, the high throne is revealed where 
sits the Son of man, — his human form robed in the Fa- 
ther's glory, — his countenance blending the infinite majesty 
of God, with the fullness of grace and truth, — his brow 
adorned with a diadem of many crowns, and all power in 
heaven and earth, in his hand. The heavens are aston- 
ished at the presence of his glory, and the adoring angels, 
prostrate, await his bidding. The fullness of the Spirit is 
his; and his office thus exalted it is, to baptize us sinners 
with that Spirit, — to give us thus, repentance and remis- 
sion of sins and sanctifying grace, and to raise ns up from 
the dead and make us sit with him in the heavenly places 
where he reigns. This is the central sun of the system 
which we have explored'. From this baptism of the Spirit 
all the ordinances here examined, derive their instructive 
light and beauty. ' It is the original, — the heavenly pattern 
whence their form and office were divinely transcribed. 
It is, therefore, the rule and standard to which all baptis- 
mal rites and doctrines must be brought. 

Tried by this rule, the figment of baptismal regenera- 
tion stands exposed in naked falsehood and dishonor ; arro- 
gating to men a share of the sovereign prerogatives of our 
glorious Baptizer ; subordinating the functions of his grace 
to their will and wisdom, their fidelity and zeal. 



CONCL US I ON. 477 

The rite of immersion too, — already discountenauced 
by the imited voice of the Scri2)tures, — when brought to 
this supreme and final test, is utterly wanting. 

It is discountenanced by the transaction at Sinai, in 
which the church was separated out of the world and con- 
secrated to God by a baptism of sprinkled w-ater and blood. 

It is discountenanced by the rites which certified and 
sealed the restoration of the healed le])er to the communion 
of Israel. 

It is discountenanced by the water of purifying with 
which the Levites were sprinkled, in their consecration to 
the service of God's sanctuary. 

It is discountenauced by the ordinance which appointed 
the water of separation, to be sprinkled as the ordinary 
and perpetuated form of the Sinai baptism, for sealing ad- 
mission to the benefits of the Sinai covenant. 

It is excluded by the declaration of the son of Sirach 
that the sprinkling of the unclean with the water of sepa- 
ration was a baptizing. 

It is discountenanced by the sprinkled baptism of the 
thirty-two thousand infants and youths of Midian, whereby 
they were received into the fold of the covenant and the 
church. 

It is condemned by every voice in the Psalms and the 
prophets which breathes a sense of the sinner's need, or 
anticipates the blessings of Messiah's grace, in the language 
of these ordinances. 

It is excluded by the explicit testimony of the apostle 
Paul, that these ordinances were baptisms. 

It is condemned by the implacable war w'hich it of 
necessity wages against the identity of the church from 
the day of the assembly at Sinai, — by its repudiation of 
the Old Testament church — the church of Moses and the 
prophets, which was for fifteen centuries a lone beacon light 
among the nations, God's only witness amid the gloom of 
thick darkness which enshrouded the world. 



4/0 CONCLUSION. 

It is discountenanced by the voice of John's baptism 
which heralded and symbohzed the outpouring of the Spirit 
on Pentecost ; and is excluded by all the circumstances of 
his ministry, which show that he could not have immersed 
his disciples, and that he would not have done it, though 
he could. 

It is discountenanced by the whole style of the evan- 
gelists and apostles, who speak of baptism and its relations 
m the language of the Old Testament, and recognize it as 
a symbol of the outpouring of Pentecost. 

It is excluded by the records of Christian baptisms as 
given by Luke, which, beginning with the three thousand 
of Pentecost and ending with the jailer of Philippi and his 
house, present an array of difficulties in the way of immer- 
sion, which are severally inexplicable, and together over- 
whelming. 

It is condemned by its association with the kindred de- 
nial of the place which God has assigned to the family and 
the children in his fold and his covenant ; and by all the 
facts which demonstrate their God-given and inalienable 
rights therein. 

It is utterly condemned by the fact that it maims the 
symmetry and completeness of the sacramental system of 
the Christian church. Whilst the Old Testament sacra- 
ments exhibit in just proportions every part and feature of 
the plan of grace, and whilst the genuine ordinances of 
the New Testament, in like proportions, abbreviate the 
Avhole, exhibiting in the holy supper the sacrament of 
Christ's humiliation and sacrifice, and in baptism that of 
his exaltation and glory, his power and grace, — the system 
in question, recognizes indeed, with us, in the Lord's sup- 
per, the memorial of Christ's suffering and death, but in 
baptism can see nothing but the symbol of his burial, and 
so leaves him and all our hopes shut up and sealed in the 
sepulchre of Joseph. 

It is signally discountenanced by the remarkable fact 



CONCL USION. 479 

that in every rite and every figure in which the Scriptures 
represent the active exercise by the Messiah of his official 
functions, the form of action is affusion, whether it be with 
the blood of atonement at the sanctuary of Israel, — the 
water, mingled with ashes or blood, which sprinkled the 
unclean, — the anointing oil poured upon the head; or the 
fires of justice rained down from heaven. 

But why dwell upon minor particulars! The rite in 
question is condemned and excluded by the whole tenor of 
the Scriptures, which demonstrate that baptizo as there used 
does not mean, to immerse, and which reveal no vestige of 
other testimony in behalf of the rite, but everywhere show 
evidence abundant and conclusive against it. 

But the capital and paramount consideration still re- 
mains, in the fact that this rite will not assimilate with, nor 
recognize the baptism which Christ dispenses from his 
throne. It ignores the exaltation whence that baptism de- 
scends, and refuses to testify of its outpouring of grace. 
And hence, although administered w'ith the use of the 
w^ords, it is not in the sense intended by the Lord Jesus, 
baptism ' ' into the name of the Father and of the Son and 
of the Holy Ghost;" for its doctrine has no relation to 
those blessed Persons, nor to our union with them. It is 
wholly occupied with another theme. Whilst the true bap- 
tism exultingly points upward to the throne of Christ's 
glory, this rite looks downward ever to the grave. 

To our readers we leave the question, — What one trait 
or characteristic of Scriptural baptism is traceable in this 
rite of immersion, in doctrine, or in form ? 

In entire consistency with a spirit of true Christian love 
and fellowship toward our brethren of the Baptist churches, 
we can not but realize an indignant revolt against this rite, 
so imperious in its claims, so devoid of evidence, so hostile 
to the true baptism of the Christian church, so efficient in 
creating division therein, — this rite in the zeal of which, 
those who reject it have been denied any part in the church 



480 CONCL USION. 

of God, or place at liis table, or portion in his covenant. 
Not such the ordinance which her glorious Head has be- 
stowed upon his church, nor such the princijiles which he 
has taught her to cherish; — an ordinance in which is shown 
forth and celebrated the glory of his exaltation and his 
grace, — an ordinance which baptizes us into his name and 
that of the blessed Godhead, by setting forth the doctrine 
of that Godhead and of our union with it in Christ by the 
Spirit, — an ordinance which seals upon the brows of our 
babes that same blessing which they received in His own 
arms and from His own hands, in the days of his flesh ; — 
and principles which teach us to recognize and embrace in 
the bonds of love and the fellowship of the covenant and of 
the church all those who in every place call upon the name 
of Jesus Christ our Lord, both their Lord and ours, even 
though they may grievously err respecting outward rites 
and forms. 

Now to Him, the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the 
only wise God, be honor and glory, for ever. Amen. 



SCRIPTURES 

ILLUSTRATED IN THE FOREGOING PAGES. 



fEsis .— i, 26, p. 268 ;— ii, 10, p. 32 ;— iii, 15, p. 41 ;— xii, 1-3, 
p. 37 ;— XV, 1+, p. 38 ;— xvii, 1-21, p. 39 ;— xvii, 7, p. 59 ;— xxii, 
16-18, p. 41 ;— xxxvii, 31, p. 158. 

mTT« —VI* 9.-R n. 42 •— iri-x-. .^-5. r>. 43 •— viv 5^-91 r> 97 45? 



168;— xxix, 12-38, p. 144;— xxxi, 19-24, p. 82;— xxxi, 23, 

p. 138. 
Deuteronomy.— iv, 10, p. 51 ;— xvi, 13-15, p. 148;— xxi, 3-9, p. 

123,-xxi, 12, p. 114. 
2 KiNGS.-iii, 11, p. 123;— V, 10, 14, p. 157. 
Job.— ix, 30, 31, p. Ill, 158. 
Psalm.— viii, 4-8, p. 269;— li, 2-10, p. 61. 
Isaiah.— i, 16, 17, p. 116;— vi, 5-7, p. 64;— xix, 19, p. 154;— xxi, 

4, p. 295;— Iii, 15, p. 140. 
EzEKiEL.— xvi, 8, 9, p. 74; — xxii, 24, p. 89; — xxxvii, 1-14, p. 301 ;— 

xxxvii, 12-15, p. 94;— xlvii, 1-12, p. 32, 33. 
Haggai.— ii, 11, 14, p. 227. 
Zechariah.— xiv, 8, p. 34, 148, 151. 

Malaciii.— iii, 2, 3, p. 287 ;— iv, 1-4, p. 291 ;— iv, 4, p. 243. 
Matthew.- iii, 5, 6, p. 233;— iii, 11, p. 241, 284;— iii, 13-15, p 

247;— xvii, 3, p. 230;-xviii, 1-5, p. 462;— xix, 13-15, p 

463;— XX, 20-23, p. 258;— xxvi, 28, p. 225;— xxvii, 24, p 

123;-xxviii, 19, 20, p. 380, 424, 431, 435, 439. 



482 SCRIPTURES ILLUSTRATED. 



Luke.— i, 17, p. 228;— ii, 22, p. 85;— iii, 16, p. 284;— iii, 21, 22, 
p. 254 ;— vii, 37, 38, 44, p. 124, 125 ;— ix, 31, p. 230 ;— ix, 46-48, 
p. 462;— xi, 29, p. 214;— xi, 38, p. 21, 209, 214 ;— xii, 49-53, 
p. 265 ;— xviii, 15-17, p. 463 ;— xxiv, 44-46, p. 100. 

John.— i, 33, p. 280;— ii, 18-22, p. 101 ;— iii, 5, p. 384;— iii, 23, 
p. 360;— iv, 14, p. 308;— vii, 37, 38 - ^nft._^^ a .. inQ._ 
xi, 25, 26, p. 92, 95;— xiv, 16, 17, 25, 




2 Corinthians.— iii, 2, 3, 6, p. 382. 

Ephesians.— iv, 3-16, p. 330;— iv, 5, p. 333;— v, 25-27, p. 390. 

CoLOssiANs. — ii, 9-13, p. 371. 

Titus.— iii, 4-7, p. 323. 

Hebrews.— ii, 5-8, p. 269;— iv, 4-9, p. 65 ;— vi, 7-9, p. 35;— vi, 

17-20, p. 41;— ix, 8, 9, p. 103;— xiii, 11-13, p. 97. 
1 Peter.— ii, 9, p. 469,— iii, 17-22, p. 333. 
1 John.— V, 18, 19, p. 110. 
Eevelation.— i, 12, 13, p. 311 ;— xxii, 1, 2, p. 32. 



INDEX, 



Ablution, Mode of domestic, page 
119. 

Abrahamic covenant, p. 37. "My 
covenant," p. 43. Everlasting, 
p. 40, 43. Circumcision, its 
seal, p. 40, 58. An adumbra- 
tion of the covenant of grace, 
p. 40. 

Administration of the great Bap- 
tizer, p. 338. 

Agora, — the market, p. 214. 

Akiva, Rabbi, p. 213. 

Alexander, Dr. Addison, quoted, 
p. 287, 301, 310, 453. 

Ambrose on Levitical baptism, p. 
194. 

Angel of his presence, p. 223, 

Anointing of Christ, p. 254. 

Apocrypha, their value, p. 153. 

Aristophanes quoted, p. 186, 325. 

Armstrong quoted, p. 259. 

Ashes of the red heifer, p. 68, 98. 

Ashes of calves, at Rome, p. 185. 

Assembly, Day of the, p. 51. 

Athenaeus quoted, p. 825. 

Augustine quoted, p. 303. 

Aztec baptism of Infants, p. 191, 

Babylonian Gemara, p. 78. 

Babylonian rabbinic schools, p. 
78, 81. 

Baptism — Argument from the 
real, p. 343. And circumcision, 
p. 58. Originated in the Old 
Testament, p. 21. Of Israel, p. 



25, 29. Levitical, p. 25. Of 
Naaman, p. 157, History of 
Christian, p. 424. On Pente- 
cost, p. 440. Its symbolic mean- 
ing, p. 92, 446. 

Baptism of fire, p. 284. 

Baptism of the Holy Ghost, p. 273, 
277, 299, 322, 331. 

Baptism of Repentance and re- 
mission, p. 318, 331, 447. 

Baptism of Jesus by John, p. 247. 

" Baptism that I am baptized 
with," p. 257. 

Baptisma and Baptismos, p, 156, 

Baptisms, Divers, imposed on Is- 
rael, p. 22, 103. 

Baptisms of things, p. 136, 219. 

Baptismal formula. There is none, 
p. 438. 

Baptismal regeneration, p. 377. 

"Baptized for the dead," p. 170. 

"Baptized from the dead," p. 169. 

Baptized into Christ, p. 321, 332, 
368. 

Baptized into one body, p. 357. 

Baptized into Moses, p, 350, 457. 

Baptizing administration of 
Christ, p. 338. 

Baptizing office of Christ, p. 
273. 

BaptizOj p. 153. Conant's defini- 
tions, p. 155, 347. Kendrick's 
admissions, p. 349. It sounds 
best! p. 352. It knows not the 
resurrection, p. 347. 



484 



INDEX. 



Baptizontai and raniizoniai, p. 216, 
Barthelemi, Abbe, quoted, p. 184. 
"Believeth and is baptized," p. 

437. 
Blood of Sprinkling, p. 30. 
Blood and water, and blood alone, 

p. 97. 
**Born of water and of the Spirit," 

p. 384. 
Brahminism the source of ritual 

immersion, p. 80. 
Breath of Christ — the Spirit, p. 

299. 
Bryant's Odyssey quoted, p. 127. 
"Buried by baptism,"^. 364. 
"Buried in baptism," p. 371. 

Calvin on the baptizing commis- 
sion, p. 424, 
* Canaan, Office of the land of, p. 48. 

Candlestick, Seven-branched, p. 
311. 

Carson quoted, p. 28, 89, 205, 368. 

Charter of the church, p. 53. 

Childbirth uncleanness, p. 62 

Children and Christ, p. 461. 

Children clean, holy, p. 466. 

Children of Midian baptized, p. 
81. 

Christ did not institute baptism, 
p. 428. 

Christ and the children, p. 461. 

Christian baptism one with John's 
p. 424. 

Christian fathers on Levitical 
baptism, p. 192. 

Christ's baptism by John, p. 247. 
It sealed him Surety of the cov- 
enant, p. 252. 

Christ's " baptism that I am bap- 
tized with," p. 257. 

Christ's baptizing office, p. 273. 
Its two functions, p. 274, 284, 
297. His administration, p. 388. 



Church defined, p. 49. Origin of 
its name, p. 51. Its charter, 
p. 53, 

Church and children, p. 461, 466. 

Church of Israel, p. 49, 411, 441. 
The Gentiles grafFed in, p. 418. 

Circe. Ulysses' bath in her pal- 
ace, p. 127. 

Circumcision. Its office, p. 24, 68, 
873. 

Circumcision and Baptism, p. 58. 

Common Prayer Book on baptism, 
p. 354. 

Conant on haptizo, p. 155, 347. 

Converts of Pentecost. Their 
character, p. 444. Were bap- 
tized with water, p. 440. 

Cornelius' baptism, p. 432, 455. 

Council, of Ephesus, p. 281 ; of 
Jerusalem, p. 394; of Nice, p. 
281; of Trent, p. 431. 

Covenant, Abi^ahamic, p. 37; of 
Sinai, p. 42. Its champions, 
Elijah and Elisha, p. 166 ; John, 
p. 230. It was the marriage, 
p. 37, 49. It and the better 
covenant, p. 224. The Messen- 
ger of the covenant, p. 223. 

Cyril of Alexandria, on Levitical 
baptism, p. 195. 

Dr. Dale quoted, p, 279, 441, 443, 
451. 

"Day of the assembly," p. 51. 

A day, a symbol of a lifetime, p. 
109. 

Dead. Defilement by, p. 62. The 
rites of cleansing, p. 68. The 
meaning, p, 96. 

Dead Sea, as a type, p. 32, 34. 

Didymus Alexandrinus, p. 378. 

Divers baptisms imposed on Is- 
rael, p, 22. What were they ? 
p. 103. 



INDEX. 



485 



Ebrard quoted, p. 294. 
Ecclesia. Origin of the name, p. 

61. 
Egypt and Israel, p. 179. 
Egyptian bathing, p. 120. 
Egyptian baptism, p. 189. 
Elders. Their origin, p. 53. 
Eleusinian mysteries, p. 188. 
Elijah and Elisha, champions of 

the covenant, p. 16G, 229. 
Elijah and John, p. 229. 
ElUcott (Bishop) on loutron, p. 

323. 
End of the Baptist argument, p. 

374. 
England, Church of — Baptistic, p. 

323, note; 354. 
Enon, The Springs, p. 360. 
Etheridge quoted, p. 78, 80, 169, 

417, 418. 
Ethiopian eunuch, p. 451. 
Euripides quoted, p. 186, 187. 
Eusebius quoted, p. 417. 
Evidence of 0. T. summed, p. 196. 

Family and the church, p. 53. 
Fathers of the church, on Leviti- 

cal baptism, p. 192; on the old 

covenant and the new, p. 377. 
Feet. Their typical meaning, p. 

134. Their washing, p. 124. 
Festival of pouring water, p. 143. 

It and the Eleusinia, p. 189. 
Figure of immersion not in the 

Old Testament, p. 23. 
Fire, The Baptism of, p. 284. The 

manner of it, p. 296. 
Formula of Baptism, p. 434, 438. 
Furniture and utensils baptized, 

p. 136, 219. 

Ganges. Immersion thence, p. 80. 
Gemara of Babylonia, p. 78; of 
Jerusalem, p. 78. 



Gentiles, place reserved in the 
Sinai covenant, p. 40. Israel's 
intercession for them, p. 47, 147. 
Graffed in, p. 418. 

Gentile purifyings, p. 8, 181, 189, 
191. 

Godhead. Order of precedence, 
p. 274. 

Gospel in the Old Testament bap- 
tism, p. 95. 

Greek bath, p. 121. 127, 200, 207. 
324. Their purifyings, p. 181. 

Grote, on Greek purifyings, p 181. 

Hair shaved, p. 102, 114, 399. 
Ilakkodesh, Rabbi Judah, p. 78. 
Hebrew-Christian church, p. 411. 
Hellenistic Greek, p. 151. 
Herodotus on Greek purifyings, 

p. 182. 
Hillel and Shammai on proselyte 

baptism, p. 79. 
Homer quoted, p. 127, 325. 
Household and church, p. 53, 461. 

Imitations of baptism by the 
heathen, p. 8, 178, 189. 

Immersion. None in the Old Tes- 
tament ritual, p. 23. None in 
its figures, p. 24. Not by the 
priests, p. 128. Nor by the peo- 
ple, p. 115, 116, 119, 134. Nor 
by the Pharisees, p. 208. The 
facilities unavailable, p. 126. 
Its incongruities, p. 202. Its 
origin, p. 80. 

India. Immersion thence, p. 80. 

Infant baptism, — in Israel, p. 81, 
82, — among the Aztecs, p. 
191, — among the Romans, p. 
187, — in the Christian church, 
p. 461, 466,471. 

"Into Christ," and "into the namo 
of Christ, ' p. 365, 434. 



486 



INDEX, 



"Into the name," p. 431. 

" Into the name of Christ," and, 
of the Three, p. 435. 

Israel a priest kingdom, p. 46. 

Israel at John's coming, p. 225. 

Israel compared with the Chris- 
tian church, p. 805. 

Issues, Uncleatti by, p. G2. The 
cleansing, p. 69. 

Jailer of Philippi, p. 456. 

Jerome on Levitical baptism, p. 
194. 

Jerusalem council, p. 394. 

Jerusalem Gemara, p. 78. 

Jesus, baptized by John, p. 247; 
his anointing, p. 254. "The 
baptism that I am baptized 
Avith," p. 257. The great bap- 
tizer, p. 267, 297. 

John and Elijah, p. 228. 

John's mission, p. 221. His bap- 
tism no novelty, p. 21. Its na- 
ture and end, p. 228. Identical 
with that of Christ, p. 425. Its 
mode, p. 237, 241. 

Josephus quoted, p. 156, 176, 178, 
240, 250, 327. 

Judith's story and baptism, p. 172. 

Kabala, whence derived, p. 80. 
Kubas defined, p. 117. 
Kendrickon baptizo, p. 349, 458. 
Kingdom of heaven defined, p. 
267. Christ's coronation, p. 278. 
Kingdom of priests, p. 46. 
Koran quoted, p. 174. 

" Lambs in his arms," p. 463. 
Laver of the Tabernacle, p. 129. 
Laver {loutron) of Paul, p. 323. 
Leprosy, unclean, p. 68, 161. 
Rites of cleansing, p. 66, 163. 
Levi, Rabbi, quoted, p. 147. 



Levites baptized, p. 85. 

Levitical baptisms all one, p. 86. 

Lewis' Origines Hebraeae quoted, 
p. 146, 149. 

Libation vase of Osor-Ur, p. 189. 

Life to the dead, meant by bap- 
tism, p. 92. 

Lightfoot quoted, p. 143, 146, 149. 

Living water. Its meaning, p. 31, 
133, 387. 

Lord's supper is the passover, p. 
408. 

Lynch, "Dead Sea Expedition" 
quoted, p. 122, 125. 

Maimonides on proselyte bap- 
tism, p. 76. 

Malachi, and John, p. 291. 

Manuscripts of New Testament. 
Care in their transcription, p. 
217. 

Maitland, "Church of the Cata- 
combs," p. 124. 

Market. Baptism after, p. 214. 

Marriage feast, p. 209, 211. 

Messenger of the covenan t, p, 223. 

Metaphor of water p. 89, 386. 

Midianite children, baptism, p. 81. 

Mishna described, p. 78. 

Mission of John, p. 221. 

Missions. The new spirit im- 
parted, p. 304. 

Mode implied in the meaning of 
self-washing, p. 115. 

Mohammedan washing before 
prayer, p. 174. 

Moore, T. V., on Malachi, p. 291. 

Mosheim quoted, p. 189, 418. 

"Much water there," p. 360. 

Murder, expiation, p. 123. Among 
the Greeks, p. 182, 184. 

Naaman's baptism, p. 157. 
New Testament Greek, p. 151. 



INDEX. 



487 



New Testament Church, how or- 
ganized, p. 393, 411, 418. 
Nidda, Water of, p. 74. 
Noah saved by water, p. 333. 

Old Testament evidence summed 
p. 196. 

Orikelos, Targum of, p. 77. 

Order of precedence in the God- 
head, p. 274. Mediatorial order, 
p. 275. 

Ordinances of testimony in Is- 
rael, p. 54. 

Osor-Ur. Libation vase, p. 189. 

Ovid on purifyings, p. 184. 

Palestine. Central position, p. 

49, 1 78. Its geology and water, 

p. 120. 
Palestinian Gemara, p. 78. 
Passover described, p. 24, 410. 

Perpetuated in the supper, p. 

408. 
Pentecost, p. 297. The Spirit bap- 
tism then given, p. 299, 304, 313, 

318. The gifts imparted, p. 313, 

318. The Spirit of missions 

then given, p. 804. 
Pharisees. The sect, p. 236, 412. 

Their purifyings, p. 209. 
Philip and the eunuch, p, 451. 
Philo Judaeus on the Levitical 

baptism, p. 77, 175, 187, 327. 
Phoenicia and Israel, p. 179, 

183. 
Plato quoted, p. 181, 245. 
Pliny quoted, p. 452. 
Plutarch quoted, p. 326. 
Pool's Synopsis quoted, p. 149. 
Pouring of water. The festival, 

p. 143. 
Pouring water, — in ablutions, p. 

119, 124, among the Greeks, p. 

324. 



Pouring water in ritual wash- 
ings of the hands, p. 123, 173. 

Prayer. Washings before, p. 173, 
In the Koran, p. 174. 

Priesthood of Aaron. His in- 
auguration, p. 131, 248. It was 
no rule to Christ, p. 248. Age 
of office, p. 249.- 

Priesthood of Christ not after 
Aaron's pattern, p. 250. 

Priest-kingdom, Israel, p. 46, 150. 

Priests' self-washings not immer- 
sions, p. 128. 

Pumbaditha rabbinic seminary, 
p. 78. 

Purifying of Jeeus and Mary, p. 
84. 

Purifyings of the Jews, p. 208. 

Purifyings of things, p. 102, 136, 
219. 

Rabbi. Akiva, p. 213. Hillel, p. 
79. Judah Hakkodesh, p. 78. 
Maimonides, p. 76, 79. Sham- 
mai, p. 79. Solomon, p. 149. 

Rabbinic baptism of Proselytes, p. 
76, 81. 

Rabbinic Schools, p. 78. 

Rabbinic traditions of the red 
heifer, p. 142. 

Rahaiz, defined, p. 118, 

Rantizd7itai and Bapiizdntai, p. 216. 

Rebaptism. Note on, p. 430, of 
John's disciples, p. 429. 

Red heifer. The ashes, p. 68, 69. 
In Philo, p. 175, in Josephus, 
p. 176. Rabbinic traditions, p. 
142. 

Remission. Baptism of, p. 96, 
244, 318. 

Resurrection symbolized by bap- 
tism, p. 92, 257, 265. 

Resurrection and bapiizo, p. 347. 

Revised Version on loutron, p. 323. 



INDEX. 



Revival at Sinai, p. 28. Baptism 
of the converts, p. 29. 

Revival under Hezekiah, p. 139. 
Purifying them, p. 13»9. 

Revival under John's ministry, p. 
232. 

Revival of Pentecost, p. 297, 318. 

Ritual law. Its office, p. 54. Its 
relation to the Sinai covenant, 
p. 56. It had no immersions, 
p. 23, 115, 116, 119, 128, 134. 
It remains in force, p. 393. The 
Gentiles exempted, p. 395, 406. 
Paul kept and enforced it, p. 
396, 402. 

Rushing mighty vs^ind of Pente- 
cost, p. 299. 

Sacraments of the Old Testa- 
ment, p. 24; of the New, p. 408. 

424. 
Sahagun quoted, p. 192. 
Sacrifice defined, p. 24. 
Sadducees. The sect, p. 412, 413. 
Saints. Origin of the title, p. 47, 

469. 
Scrivener on the Greek MSS,, p. 

218. 
Sea of brass, p. 130. 
Sea water. Its meaning, p. 32. 

Idolatrous use of it, p. 187. 
Self-washings, p. 101, 108. Their 

relation to the sprinklings, p. 

164, 105, 136. 
Separation. Water of, p. 68, 73. 
Septuagint. Its origin, p. 152. 
Seven candlesticks, p. 128, 311. 
Seven days uncleanness, p. 60, 

64, 98. 
Seven sprinklings, p. 67, 98. 
Seventh day. Symbolic meaning, 

p. 64, 98. 
Shammai and Hillel on proselyte 

baptism, p. 79. 



Shasters, p. 80. 

Shataph, defined, p. 117. 

Shaving ofi" the hair, p. 114. By 
Paul, p. 399. 

Sinai. The scene, p. 27. The 
covenant, p. 42, 45. Relation 
of the Gentiles, p. 46, 53, 56. 
Place reserved for them, p. 46. 
Its conditions, p. 42. Its prom- 
ises, p. 45. The revival there, 
p. 28. The baptism, p. 29. 

Smith's Dictionary quoted, p. 127, 
184, 188, 247, 324, 363. 

Socrates and Phaedrus, p. 245. 

Solomon, Rabbi, quoted, p. 149. 

Son of man. His kingdom, p. 267. 
His administration, p. 338. 

Sophocles quoted, p. 325, 326. 

Sora rabbinic school, p. 78. 

Sprinkling represents rain, p. 35. 
Its meaning, p. 88, 99. 

State of the N. T. question, p. 201. 

Susannah's story, p. 122. 

Tubal. Its meaning, p. 79, 157. 

Tabernacle. Its symbolic struc- 
ture, p. 128. 

Tabernacles. The feast of, p. 144. 

Talmud described, p. 78. 

Talmudic baptism, p. 76. 

Targums described, p. 77. 

Ten commandments, the eternal 
law of the covenant, p. 43. 

TertuUian quoted, p. 193, 378. 

Theodosia Earnest quoted, p. 233, 
236. 

Theophrastus quoted, p. 824. 

Things purified, p. 102, 136, 219. 

Third day. Its typical meaning, 
p. 100. 

Thomson. The Land and the Book, 
p. 34. 

Tiberias rabinnic school, p. 78. 

Tongues as of fire, p. 310. 



INDEX. 



489 



Tongues. Other, p. 313. 

Transcription of the N. T. Care 
in it, p. 217. 

Transfiguration of Jesus, p. 230. 

Trinity. Order of precedence, p. 
274. Procession of the Spirit, 
p. 281. 

Typical structure of the taber- 
nacle, p. 128. 

Ulysses' bath, p. 127. 

Unclean. Its meaning, p. 60, 466. 

Unclean seven days. The mean- 
ing, p. 60, 98. How cleansed, 
p. 65. 

Unclean till even. Two causes, 
p. 108. The meaning, p. 109. 

Union wrought by baptism, p, 
322, 332. 

Utensils and furniture baptized, 
p. 136, 219. 

Various reading of Mark vii, 4, 

p. 216. 
Vedas, referred to, p. 80 
Virgil quoted on purifyings, p. 

186. 



Waldenses referred to, p. 49. 

Washing. Before prayer, p. 173. 
Mohammedan, p. 174. 

Washing, the hands, p. Ill, the 
hands and feet, p. Ill, 124, the 
garments, p. 112, the flesh, p. 
113. 

Washings of the people. Domes- 
tic, p. 119. Ritual, p. 134, 210. 
Of the priests, p. 128. Before 
meals, p 210. 

'•' Washing of water by the word, ' 
p. 390. 

Water, fresh and salt, p. 31, 32. 

Water, Metaphor of, p. 387. 

Water. Festival of outpouring, 
p?143. 

Wilkinson's Manners and Cus- 
toms of the Egyptians, p. 120. 

Wind, Rushing mighty, — of Pen- 
tecost, p. 299. 

Witness. Israel's office, p. 47, 54. 

Zend Avesta, referred to, p. 80. 
Zlon. Out of her the law, p. 420. 
Zoroaster referred to, p. 80. 



6^ 
7' 



